Les Shatteréd
by TheTerrierQueen
Summary: The Most Tragic Love Story of All Time Was That Of a Man and The World- The World Which Made Him a Living Monster... and All That He Would Sacrifice to Save It From Damnation. /New 3-part epic: please R&R.\
1. Dark In the Lightness: Prologue

Dark in the Lightness: The Prologue

_**Dies iræ! dies illa**_

_**Solvet sæclum in favilla**_

_**Teste David cum Sibylla!**_

_Day of wrath! O day of mourning!_

_See fulfilled the prophets' warning_

_Heaven and earth in ashes burning!_

_**...Confutatis maledictis,**_

_**flammis acribus addictis:**_

_**voca me cum benedictis...**_

_...While the wicked are confounded,_

_doomed to flames of woe unbounded_

_call me with thy saints surrounded..._

_**Pie Jesu Domine,**_

_**dona eis requiem. Amen.**_

_Lord, all pitying, Jesus blest,_

_grant them thine eternal rest. Amen._

Before her, borne amidst the swallowing blackness, were bombardments of voices and sounds: memories. Memories falling. Those precious visions of crystal...plunging deeper and deeper into the well of her subconscious mind, already in shards. The shards had once been a vase of refulgent crystalline. The vase a life full lived. And yet it was empty. It needed not spill over with the wine of good fortune or with the water of untainted purity. The vase itself was life in its solidity. Time was ingrained within it. The precious side of time. The side we savor as it sweetens hopes and dreams, past and present in our mouths like the very bread of the earth. This side of time's rarified face is what nourishes the child in the womb, what springs the flower from the prison of its bud, what gives love a nudge to its feet as if it were a newborn colt so that love may suckle from life itself and flourish and grow strong on its own accord. This sentimental side of time draws beauty out of itself. It muses over the majesties of the earth: music, art, philosophy, literature. They are its fruit.

But there is another divison of time's face. The side that crushes, rots, scars and distorts. The side that shatters. It swipes at life's virginal body with its claws, tearing savagely at its delicate being until only shards remain. Falling. It waits in the shadows for every living being until the day it prevails and attacks; stopping the breath, stilling the pulse. Forever. This sordid side of time took from her everything precious that its half brother had bestowed upon her: the child, above all. And it would be her murderer. It thirsted for her blood even then as she struggled lightly for breath. She did not struggle for herself, but for Faustine. And for _him_. She had always thought herself a dissapointment. Would he ever forgive her for letting him go again? She had _promised _him, never again...

She could sense hot breath down the back of her neck as that demon of time drew nearer. The feeling of the taffeta bedcover fell away in her grasp as only the final pulse of the passing moments consumed every physical nerve. What was there before her eyes seemed only a vision. The girl...in tears at her side. Tears so sweet but so full of sorrow fell unfelt to her trembling hand. How she longed to speak, to tell her how terribly she would swell her beautiful golden eyes for the mourning ceremonies. She could only think of those eyes. They seemed to her the only thing left mystifying to this world. They captivated her, even as she stood on life's edge, overlooking the void. Those eyes. True windows to the soul of the most wonderful of all creation.

She remembered what had been, still unable to speak from sheer weakness. Memories that bound together years of love poisoned with heartache. All of what was scorned and baren and lifeless-the desert- but at its heart bore fruit- the oaisis. Memories that transcended time...that stretched across miles. They came to their end at the recolection of a certain paradise. She smiled, knowing the girl was there, somewhere near before her. That paradise had given her the gift now weeping into her own numbed hands. She felt the arid wind blowing against her face. Grasses whispering love sonnets to the waters that fed them life. Stars serenading with light . She could feel, as if it were as "there" as the fabric against her wilting cheek, the warmth of the sand newly plunged from heat into the flushing cool of night. And heartbeat, close and intense with passion...the heartbeat that now moved hers through the struggle to hold on. It would guide her safely to the edge of the threshold.

With listless blue eyes glazing over, she could feel only the reverberations of sound around her. Sounds that were truly there danced with those of long ago. Voices. Someone was screaming at the top of their lungs. She knew it must be Faustine, shrieking for her to come back with every last ounce of herself she could muster.

Or was it of a poor woman, one in the foaming sea of hundreds, crying out in desparation from the insufferable pain, from the pits of grief, alongside the procession? Her first born lay dying in her arms; she called out- voice drowning in the multitudes of the spitting and the cursing- for his salvation alone as a substance white as cow's milk mingled with the tears that flowed from her shrouded eyes. The horse in front would spook, for out of the many- the terrible many- this is the one that would make even the animal spirit cry out in lament. This is the one that would haunt the woman falling limp on the brink of departure from the bitterness of the earth. Perhaps it was this voice.

Substancial in depth, blasphemous in tone, the screaming spilentered through the mental silence that so often heralds the final hour. Even so, it did not disturb her. She had lived through hells far worse. Within moments it would cease, nothing was more certain to her now. And so she waited, not even flinching at this prismatic echo of the wails. The voice, to whomever it belonged, screamed for something that went far beyond basic human need. Whatever it was... it called out for a miracle beyond miracles. It called for some unorthodox savior. It called for an unfathomable act of justice even when there is not even a flicker of hope left to quench it.

The loss of hope lacerates the human spirit. It steals away everything a being has left to build a foundation of existance upon. And so the foundation crumbles- like a city set aflame. What was once splinded and prosperous reduced to only ash. But what then? Even in smoldering dust lies the beauty of what it once was. A vestage. The broken human spirit is no different. Somewhere beneath the wretched ugliness of scorn, defilement, suffering and unfruitful sacrifice lies the one undying beauty that cannot and will not smolder under time's searing flame. Love. Man must overcome his fear of darkness, facing what disgusts him to the very pits of his soul to unearth love in its purest form. Compassion. And maybe, at the same time, he will overcome the darkness within himself...and, perhaps, discover the compassion.

Suddenly, the pleading cries echoing about in her delirious mind became words of a different time and place, ringing off like gunfire in rapid, executionist's succession. Words of tormented anguish, of battle and the crossing of swords. Hoofbeats in sands interwined with howls of pain, bellows of triumph, driving rain and soft, tender vespers of love, the strongest of all. Phantom sacraments of her disheveled past. But through this loud mirage of torrent echoed what would never be lost to her, even as she leaned back aghast, struck and awaiting the stony grip of death:

"_Trust in me_."

The time demon's hot breath against her neck was not its own anymore. She welcomed the moist brush of air, for it was the last feeling her physical senses would interpret. It was not the exhale of impending death. She did not fear it, for the breath belonged to the heartbeat, she knew and believed, that imbalmed her in its rhythm. That sweet breath kept her alive. She would trust it, love it, follow it to the ends of the earth. Until her final pulse...

_Trust._

How she would remember him after her passage into true and total light. How could she forget him? _How could she forsake him...again?_

And it was in this moment of freefalling memory that she would embrace, in finality, what had shaped the life that now lay behind her: Time is one. Without evil there cannot be a defined good. Without darkness there is no light.

The beautiful side of time's face cannot exist without its scorned, fatal half. They are one. They _are_ life.

There was nothing left for her to regret.

And as the final refractions of those splintering shards were eaten up by a new kind of darkness- a kinder side of darkness, much like the lighter side of time- she fell back into the arms of her angel and was still at last.

**What was shattered was made whole again.**


	2. Pax: 1: Beaucathrine

**Book I: Pax**

_Chapter 1: Beaucathrine_

* * *

The scarf hanging limp around Christine's throat served as her own personal noose. Morning winds in an undignified hurry wrenched it tighter with every step, stunting her breath along with the brisk chill and the soot they carried. She didn't even want to begin to think of what her hair looked like, nor how bloodshot her eyes were from traveling windward. Her only thought was to keep up to pace with the awkward-looking woman before her.

"Miss Daaé! If you can't hurry along we shall be late! Gracious, child, if I were in your place I would sprout a pair of wings before I was to be tardy for any of _his_ invitations. And today of all days!" huffed the stout old British woman leading her recklessly through the crowded walkway.

Struggling to lift her skirts higher, the dainty blonde retorted, "He's my fiancé and I will arrive when I please. After all, it certainly wasn't my idea to give our only hired driver food poisoning. The wretch. This wind is dreadful! And what makes 'today of all days' so bloody important anyway?"

"Careful that mouth of yours, pigeon," the madame reprimanded, grasping Christine's wrist momentarily to pull her back up to stride. "And you know as well as I do how anxious he's been lately. You can tell it in a man's eyes, you can. I just don't believe it proper that you should den- ohhh, out of the streets, savages!"

A trio of musky urchin boys scattered from her path where they had been rolling around in the middle of the snow covered walk. The dowdy thing took a moment to smack one of them in the back of his head with her muff, then pressed on again in a ruffled tither. Before scrambling off into the shelter of a back alley, all three turned briefly to gawk, foolish young hearts pounding, at the young diva's well-endowed figure. The satin ringlets of yellow hair spilling down onto her shoulders and the creamy porcelain tint to her cheek were alone enough to send a grown man into a daze—much less ridiculous, staring gamin. The momentarily smitten boys were lucky enough not to have caught sight of her blue eyes before darting off, for there is no escaping certain fixations.

"A bold thing of you to say, Mrs. Boston. I've always known you to be keeping notions of us," Christine sneered lightly.

"Everyone has notions dear. Whether you like it or not assumptions _will_ be made of a young woman who puts herself in a position to, well... be assumed of."

The snow beneath their feet thinned a bit, allowing for faster passage. Mrs. Boston returned her bony old hands to her muff as she scurried along. Flyaway hairs wisped out from her loosened bun as another flurry passed over and a pucker of distaste fell across her lips.

"Pish! I hear enough of this nonsense form those wicked old hens I'm made to associate with and I certainly don't need to hear it from you. Don't you even consider how I feel when you rag on about weddings and engagements and stupid, stupid parties?"

Much too focused on her destination to sense the almost tearful waiver in Christine's words, Mrs. Boston answered briskly, "One day you'll thank me for my ragging! Until then you'll humor me by picking up those feet of yours. I'll not be running ragged through the filthy streets chasing down a husband for you when I've one foot in my own coffin."

There wasn't a word to be said to that and so Christine bit her lip. Nothing could make the morning any more unpleasant quite the way arguing with the stubborn old broad she had the pleasure of calling caretaker could. As if, like a child, she needed caring for. But _he_ had insisted Mrs. Boston's services for her nevertheless and perhaps _he_ was the wiser for it.

'Still,' she thought with a course sniff of her nose, 'she was hired to be a caretaker, not a matchmaker.'

The two pressed on, side by side, expelling the smoke of warm breaths from beneath their swaddling layers. A chill wrapped itself around Christine's stockinged ankles. She gave a shiver at the cold permeating to the flesh underneath the dainty white gloves adorning her hands. It was then that she felt just a flicker of regret for disregarding Mrs. Boston's stern warning to wear her thicker, warmer, considerably uglier gloves out in the biting weather. In short, they were far from the most attractive pair she owned. She had fought tooth and claw to retain one scrap of her dignity on this excursion: decent looking gloves. To be seen in public with those soot grey beauties, all sprinkled with incalculable balls of lint was unthinkable. She could have worn them out the same as a cat could lay eggs. The Brit was out of her mind. Hadn't she been instructed to dress her most lavish for this particular little rendezvous anyway? Whatever the case may have been, Christine had ages before promised herself to never again dress like a beggar—the way she had so often done in and out of the Opera house—for the rest of her natural life. She had already caught enough smoldering glances from the ladies who scoured the usual stuffy social gatherings for less than "acceptable" attire. They had already plenty of license to scoff behind her back, and she was wary of their words, even when she knew this one was to be a private brunch. It was a constant compulsion, now that she found herself in the limelight more often than ever before, to fuss over her looks and composure. Christine delved her frozen pair of hands into the inviting confines of her coat pockets. Mrs. Boston caught a side-glance of her shivering and immediately began a tirade of 'you'll catch your death of cold's along with an odd assortment of other 'I told you so's. Paris in winter was never forgiving.

With the generously proportioned caretaker out in front of their harried procession of two, the crowds parted easily. In the late morning the local cafés and markets along their route bustled with the vivace intermingling of human forms in close contact. Warmth came from every direction and yet from nothing in particular so as to melt the snow in different spots on the cobblestone. The scene was crisp as they neared one of the more popular corner bread shops. Stoic bourgeois carried on grim social philosophies, whetted by their café au laits and fellows' droll musings, among the even lower class men who only came to smell the air and poke fun at each other before the work day began its rigors. The air did smell of bread which could attract any soul, rich or poor notwithstanding. Housekeepers, sent out to market by their wealthy mistresses, with the quick-drawn tempers of wild boar bickered viciously throughout the cluttered stands. An apple here. A sack flour there. They would dispute, curse and haggle in the most impolite fashion that could be mustered, though there was no real need to. One was prone to think they fought for sport.

This discombobulated heart of Paris existed with its belly buried in the dirty snow, nose upturned and proud of it. It prided itself in its own admittedly tasteful grunge with a pretty sort of charming vanity. Here the wily stray mongrel could be found lounging about a flower shop, just as welcome as any paying customer. And what of the homeless man? Why there was no better place to scrounge up bread enough to make a sufficient breakfast among these shops and still not be spat upon if he was brazen enough(which most of them were). The people—though not dirt poor, still so resilient—were kinder here.

Christine, however, was not in the business of looking for hospitality. She only wanted a way through. When the crowd began to thicken again she shoved in closer to Mrs. Boston, gritting her teeth in frustration. They jostled through the tight congregation that stood gathered around a portion of the open square in front of the bread shop. It wasn't long before the pair realized that something was going on over the heads of the bystanders in front of them that the ones beside them were shoving and straining to see. Mrs. Boston stopped to try to see between the many jumbled bodies blocking her line of sight to the middle of what now looked to be a circle within which they were trapped. A sustained mumble reverberated through the crowd, interrupted by bursts of yells and zealous whoops and calls; the mumble soon turned to nothing but.

"What on earth do you suppose this mess is, love?" the old woman wondered aloud.

Christine, too preoccupied with evading the strange looking man who inched closer and closer to her by the second to shout an answer over the growing throng of noise, ignored her. Disgusted with this awkwardly close contact with awkward looking strangers who didn't look as if they would be above rape, she grappled for her oblivious caretaker's hand to duck them rapidly through the excited but idol bystanders that thinned out in front of them. Mrs. Boston protested from her back pain but the now fearful young woman would heed none of it. She had to get out of there.

Unfortunately, with a final shove the last row of spectators gave way easily. They were both thrust into the center of what now appeared to be a ring where a violent fight had broken out between two now well-battered, ragged street waifs, still carrying on their fierce squabble. The two men moved and shot about with blows too fast to be registered in the heat of the moment so that they seemed a blur of twisting, grappling anguish. At the sight of spilled blood, which did not make itself sparse, staining nearly every square inch of the snow in the middle of the ring, Mrs. Boston gave a loud rasp of horror and scrambled in the other direction, backing hastily for the safe confines of the crowd. Christine, however, jarred to a frozen halt in her steps like a lifeless marble goddess, was confronted with a sight that would have sent any other woman into screaming hysterics.

His face already torn into by countless other blows and pouring from cheek to cheek with the grotesque red fluid, the man before her stumbled forward, falling blindly, _hopelessly_ into her arms after a final descending shot to the jaw from his opponent. This other ruffian, considerably taller, better muscled and pale with arms and legs like the appendages of a predator, was not in as near fatal condition as his now helpless prey. His fists bore the blood of the man half his stature who rasped from want of breath, buried in the shaking arms of a defenseless young woman at his feet.

Christine had fallen to the ground upon having so much force fall into her at once, but she did not throw him off of herself in terror. Quite the contrary. Within moments almost every inch of her dark winter coat was invisibly stained. Still, she clung only tighter. Her pulse beat like the feeling of cannon-fire in her throat as she moved herself over him to serve as a foolish shield should his deathly-looking opponent come for him another time. She did not think of the consequences—something greater than thought guided her actions. Something that subdued the instinct to run.

The wounded gamin stilled as the trembling weight of her bosom rose and fell against his own chest. It was as if he had found enough peace to satiate himself with unconsciousness in the flicker of a moment—which was exactly how much time had passed. Christine's fearful eyes had no time to look down at him. No time to see if he was all right, no time to see who he was through that mask of blood. Her gaze was locked on the figure that glared at her with spiteful, snarling visage aflame—hating every inch of her for the crime she was in the middle of committing against him. Denying him his victory.

The shadow fell over her with disturbing perfection as the fierce man in the tattered beggar's vest stepped forth. He snorted out frost and blood and cracked his enormous knuckles into his palms. The crowd from every direction hissed and seethed, screaming wildly for the idiot girl to move aside and let them at it again. The creases of this barbaric creature's face tightened and when every functioning muscle in Christine's body became completely immobilized he sensed it. But the dark man was no fool. In the blink of an eye he snatched up the two sacks—one being his own, the other belonging to his victim—and turned tail to run for a gap in the crowd that so easily parted to let him through.

Christine's eyes were still affixed to where the frightening stranger had stood moments before when the man in her arms, sensing the crowd's agitated departure, shook with the last effort of his strength. A choking cry escaped his battered throat, "Get back here, you thieving bastard! Get back here and finish the job!"

Laughs emitted from what was left of the departing crowd. Christine was certain she heard Mrs. Boston calling out her name, fighting against the current of filthy men who were returning to their worthless livelihoods as one of their fellows lay half dead in the street. But of course he was not a fellow to them.

"Saint Mademoiselle!" a man in a mauve derby yelled mockingly from the street corner, "Do you know who it is you're holding there?"

The stranger's infuriating voice died away as Christine's gaze fell down to the broken body she cradled. The blood that still leaked from him created a halo around them both in the snow. The poor man wheezed violently, a rasping sound that came from the pit of injured lungs. Filth mingled with mud and snow accumulated in his short, dirty blonde locks. She pushed back her own mussed hair from her face and tensed her skin against the cold and wet soaking into her clothes from the melting slush she knelt in. When she was finally able to escape the paralysis of fear, she wiped away the blood caked across his eyes, then began working to tear off what was left of his threadbare cloak and shirt. Christine gasped at what she found beneath it. Across his naked heaving chest, bruises black as ebony covered lacerations, lacerations covered scars, scars covered inflammation (from living in the repulsive street filth she doubted not), and inflammation hid every visible trace of virgin flesh. The rest was skin and bones. A carriage rushed by carelessly behind her, throwing all matter of snow and gutter remnants against her back. She did not flinch. She did not fuss. She felt for a pulse.

All the while tears welled in her eyes but she knew could not dwell on it. She made them submit and pressed on with her frantic work, tearing fabric from her skirts to try to stop his bleeding.

Suddenly she heard the familiar, tired voice of the old British woman standing over her utter words that set her blood to boil: "Disgusting creature isn't he? My God, I've never seen anything so thin and ugly. A pity he's had to suffer, not being lucky enough to die and all that sort of thing. A pity indeed, dear. Paris could always use a little less scum on her streets."


	3. Pax: 2: Comfort in Bronze

**Book I: Pax**

_Chapter 2: Comfort in Bronze_

* * *

"Our driver fell ill. And you expect me to stay home and have you worried sick over us?"

Christine let her explanations spill out like a ton of fish from a swollen net with every bit the same nauseating disarray. They weren't very good ones, either. Recovery had found its way back to her shocked system not a minute too soon. An hour before, she had hardly been able to speak or move while waiting for Mrs. Boston to fetch help. Those terrifying moments she had waited defenseless, just as well off alone, in the desolate gutter with only an incapacitated gamin to warm her side had induced a state of mental hypothermia. It was the kind of feeling that does not go away easily. A feeling of being lost and alone... she recognized it immediately.

As frightened as she was there at the mercy of the streets and elements, Christine held out against the relentless jeers and sneers of passersby until her salvation finally arrived in the form of a magnificent black brougham. The jaws of her tormentors dropped instantly when the grand thing pulled up in haste, opening its opulent doors to the fool woman and vagabond lying in the ice. The cab looked fit to transport nothing less than royalty. It was miraculous enough to even have a carriage of such status appear in this part of the city. These two wretches looked as if they weren't worthy to stand two feet from it. A few called it a crime between themselves. Onlookers watched in gawking disbelief as a man dressed as exquisitely as the conditions would allow—without a doubt of well-becoming aristocracy—leapt from the cab to embrace the trembling woman, exchanging a few inaudible words with her before taking the thin urchin up in both arms and bearing him gently into the brougham. A plump old hag limped out around same time to tend the girl with blankets and usher her into the cab after him. Whispers of "de Chagny" flitted through a choice few of the passing locals and did not soon die away after the brougham's leave. If they hadn't witnessed it with their own eyes they would have been hard pressed to believe something of the sort could happen. But happen it did, though Christine did not think it so enthralling herself. She had always thought that modest locale a charming and civilized realm of the city. 'Kind' was no longer the word that came to mind.

The creamy pink had returned to her cheeks and the redness had gone from her eyes, but her entire body still gave a cold shiver every other moment, though the hearth near which she stood blazed with pulsating gusto.

Wrapping herself tighter into her beloved's sweeping coat lent her at least some sense of reassurance. It gave off such a deep, manly odor that when she pressed her face into its lining a comforting—somewhat swooning—feeling came over her. It was not enough, however, to completely free her nerves. Inside, she was still face to face with the hateful crowd and that tyrant of a stranger. Despite the sultry nearness of the fire and the succoring smell of his skin on the cloak that enveloped her, the heart still pounded maliciously from the ordeal. Unease was not sensed. It was concrete, physical in the room's occupants.

"I couldn't just...let it happen the way it was heading. He fell into my arms, it wasn't by choice. God knows not one of those scoundrels would have paid him an ounce of sympathy. I couldn't just sink back into the crowd, no better than any of those monsters, pretending not to have seen anything. You _must_ understand. I just couldn't, Raoul, I couldn't! I know should have. It wasn't my place...but he was just so...broken. I just—," she staggered to redeem her actions.

At this last installment of defensive remarks, the perturbed Vicomte shot up a definitive hand to silence abruptly whatever she had next intended to say. This was done effectively without turning from his preoccupation with the reeking, battered urchin that was presently seeping dark red fluid into the fabric of his newest, whitest Louis XV chaise to glare at her. It was clear, even without seeing an expression, that he had taken his fill of excuses.

She drew a breath. There was so much left she felt the need to explain. She hoped though, more than anything, that he wouldn't ask to speak to her privately about the matter. Whatever needed to be said could be said outright. It was a shame, she thought rebukingly of herself, that she could not bare to be alone with the man whom she had promised to one day call husband. At least not now. Now he seemed less like the lover and more of a disappointed father. She waited anxiously, though not eagerly, for his voice like a timid, frightened child after breaking a window, not at all looking for the punishment. It was not the nearness nor the privacy that she feared. It was the interrogation.

In one hand Raoul held a bottle of antiseptic, a plain cloth in the other and across his forehead enough sweat to drown an elephant. Dressing the poor fellow's wounds thus far had taken close to half an hour. He was no less disturbed by the stranger's condition as Christine had been, but was a bit less enthusiastic about addressing it.

Not another word crossed the room between them for a good while.

Christine sunk deeper into the confines of the coat, watching the tongues of the flames lap upward. With a plaintive sigh, she eased onto the floor. Tucking both legs under her and out to one side she nestled before the fire in a sort of prim, nervous posture that well conveyed her flightily yet infallibly innocent nature. Her eyes cast down to the Persian rug beneath her. Patterns of flowers, vines and leaves intertwined together through domineering red of the base fibers. It was a handsome rug, as soft as it was beautiful.

Between her two hands passed something she had found in one of the poor man's pockets. A small bronze figurine. A curious bronze figurine of a lion. The eyes were empty with mouth gaping in an unnaturally curved manner, giving the figure an almost grotesque look. It was well worn along its edges and the painted red banner—though more of a ribbon—that hung from its mouth and streamed along either side of it had begun to chip and fade. Tiny words were inscribed into the banner's two tails. Christine was not all that well acquainted with English and the deterioration of the letters made it difficult to read in the first place. Her fingers traced the smoothed indentions and depressions of the bronze. The mane's texture contrasted the body's sleekness and the snout was the most exquisitely shaped thing she had ever laid eyes on. She adored the way it fit in her hand, the way the light shone off its most distinguished features. It felt as if it had made many hands its home. Perhaps over a very long time.

Christine set the figure on the bare hearth before the fire to warm the inanimate beast. She had finally found a method of calming her nerves, though it seemed petty. She was becoming quite fond of the little thing, though at first it had been nothing more to her than a cold lump of metal. The lion was only left out of grasp long enough for Christine to slip the cloak off from her back. All of a sudden, she felt no more need for it than the rest of the clothes on her back. The lion felt foreign in her palm, but it gave her a sense of comfort she had never experienced before...as far as she knew.

"Do you have any idea," Raoul began slowly, bowing his head to let the moderately lengthened, supple blonde hair fall over his face, finally finished with his makeshift nursing, "how much you could have cost me?"

As he spoke he slowly turned to her, exposing that heart-churning, godlike face and all that lie beneath it that she had fallen so deeply in love with. Only now, she could not face it. Christine's eyes fell to the rug again.

He had surprised her. The words stumbled on the way out of her throat, "I'm sorry Raoul. It was inconsiderate of me, putting your reputation in jeopardy that way."

"My reputation," he gave an light, ridiculous, 'I can't believe what I'm hearing' sort of laugh, "has nothing to do with the fact that you could have very well been seriously hurt or even _killed, _don't you understand? I would worry over not seeing you, would I? How do you think I feel about hearing my only fiancé is lying in a cold, wet gutter alone with some strange man—God knows what all he might be carrying—in the middle of the _slums_ of all places? You're lucky not to have gotten pneumonia, or—or—or kidnapped, or..."

"Raoul," she tried to calm him by softly interrupting.

"Why on _earth_ didn't you go along with Mrs. Boston?!" he shouted.

"Raoul, please..."

"Answer me!" he jarred the bench he had been sitting on furiously when he stood.

There was no avoiding that face now. She locked her eyes immediately onto to his in that spilt moment of tension. A lump welled up painfully in the back of her throat. He stood before her now, close enough to smell the pungent scent of antiseptic on his hands. Close enough to make her regret saving the waif's essentially worthless life and risking her own to do it. Almost enough to make her regret other things...

"_I couldn't leave him,"_ she gasped piteously, as tears began to accumulate in the corners of her eyes—but not in fear.

Raoul's expression softened instantly. The tension drained from every muscle and he drew back an inch, ashamed. Remembering himself, he unclenched his fists. In their stead, he offered down an apologetic hand that she in turn took up without hesitation. He drew her up from the ground in one gentle motion, offering a warm, firm body in exchange for her forgiveness. She took him up on his offer but still gave a shiver of cold insecurity in his embrace. Her snivels, close and dainty in his right ear, melted his heart without even trying. Though, to be quite honest with himself, he was much too soft to hold anything against her for any amount of time. The only thing he wished was that he could console her the way she could him.

Christine wrapped both arms around his chest then stilled with her forehead tucked tenderly into the crest of his neck. Peace found its way through them both as Raoul was assured she understood him perfectly. She had scared the wits out of him; surely she could comprehend that. But behind his back she fondled the lion in both hands, listless to all else but the morphine-like sedation it gave her. Listless toward everything. Including him.

His smile widened, unseen to her from where she rested, "I'm sorry, love. You will forgive me, won't you? What you did was nothing short of heroic. I just wish you wouldn't terrify me so, that's all. You know I couldn't bare losing you..."

"Yes. Yes, of course," she replied in somewhat of a mindless tone, one that underneath it all spoke to something else entirely.

Her cold response startled him. It wasn't at all like her to seem this careless. It was no secret that her mind was preoccupied with something other than his soppy apologies. Four words were enough. Raoul settled on the idea that she was still distraught from the ordeal and did not take it personally in the least. As long as he was forgiven for his barbaric outburst, he was content with the acknowledgment—and especially the affection—he received.

She released him kindly to examine the pitiful fellow she had saved from the street's brutalities. The pitter of snow on the windows of the room kept the tempo of his sporadic breathing. A linen wrapped across his bruised head kept pressure on a number of facial wounds. The telltale signs of internal and external damage made themselves apparent across every inch of him. In her eyes he lay there as a living, breathing (hardly, but nonetheless) corpse. She knew his pain must be great, to hurt from the inside-out that way. She caressed the bristled edge of his chin with the same tenderness she had shown the lion still clutched safely in her left hand.

"For some reason or another," sighed Raoul, "he's still alive. Looks to be young. No older than myself, I'd say. Wouldn't say he's lucky, though. There's enough wrong with him to make a doctor a handsome fortune. I've never seen anything quite like it. Especially the swollen lymph nodes on the insides of the groin. They must be five...six times their normal size. Of course I'm not a doctor, but..."

"May I see?" she asked innocently enough, lifting the white sheet that covered him an inch.

"I'd rather you not." He raised a curt eyebrow.

Then, without warning, the man's voice rasped out, "Beaucathrine! My name is...Beaucathrine."

Christine fell onto her knees beside the chaise at once to be on level with him. Raoul fumbled to reposition the pillow behind the stranger's head. Together they hoped he would speak again. Beneath the unpleasant roughness of his voice came a most unusual sound. A strange, intriguing dialect spilled out from his throat that instantly captivated them both.

"I'm sorry, monsieur. What was your name again?" asked Christine meekly.

"Liam. That's what I'd be called if anyone ever cared to call me anything."

The small, sickly man went into a series of coughing fits, held calm by Christine's warm hands clutching his own.

"And your last name is Beaucathrine...I presume," the Vicomte continued after he was well recovered from his raking coughs.

The waif called Liam snorted weakly through his wrappings, "It isn't Voltaire, if that's what you're wondering."

He sunk back into the plushness of his surrounding, makeshift bed, exhausted beyond a healthy limit. Raoul insisted they let him be for a while. Talking alone seemed to be a struggle in itself for him. Even though he did not seem to have the most personable of natures, they decided to leave him alone so that he would not be tempted to exert himself.

But when Christine turned reluctantly from the man's resting form, holding the figure now close to her chest, the voice reached out to her again.

"The lion," spake the poor man, "was my mother's. You wouldn't happen to know... the old Irish legend, would you now?"

The couple turned to face him again.

"Irish?" piped Christine, tracing the lion obsessively with her fingers again while he had returned her thought to it.

"You're a half blood. Beaucathrine is French," said Raoul, cleaning his hands with the soiled towel that had been across his lap while he had been tending wounds as they made their way back to his side.

"Aye," the chap answered, giving a feeble but warm smile with what all strength he had left. A wonderful twinkle permeated through those woe-begotten eyes. The Vicomte was impressed, admittedly. People of his own class and file had so many times trodden over this man's dignity and very soul. Nevertheless, he still found some reason to look upon this rich young fool with gratitude. But when his eyes turned to meet his lovely blue eyed savior's, they held so much more.

"Aye," he repeated, nodding to her sweetly. "As I may only have a few hours left...only the dear Lord knows...the least I can do is enlighten you about that funny scrap of bronze in your hand ma'amoiselle."

"Do," Christine urged through the purest of smiles so that it did not seem the least bit selfish. She trusted the dear Lord knew better than him. All the while, she held his callous, unsteady hand tight in her own and trembled. She trembled with joy.

* * *


	4. Pax: 3: The Mongrel and His Tale

_**Book I: Pax**_  
_Chapter 3: The Mongrel and His Tale_

* * *

"In the village of Carlingford... where my mother was born...stories...had always been the staple of the people," Liam choked out a most emphasized beginning. With Christine nestled thoughtfully beside him and the dignified young gentleman sitting at attentive ease on the end of the chaise, he felt the mood relax. Through his pain, he felt accepted enough to go on and only went on because he wanted to.

"I've never been there myself—born in Dublin actually—but I know enough about it to suit me. It sits on the coast of the loch by the same name, in the county of Louth, if I remember properly. A pretty little place. Pretty if nothing else. I don't think Mam ever meant to leave it for good when she met my father in Dublin. Claude Beaucathrine...ran his mouth. That's the most to be said about him. A chance meeting, a few choice words and she never looked back. Stole her away from everything she knew before she was ready, he did. Didn't waste time making a mother out of her either."

"Frenchmen," Christine smiled coyly.

Raoul fidgeted. Liam nodded, skipping over the unpleasantries of his depressing pre-existence and continued at a lighter place.

"As a young girl my mother would travel down the footpath through the southern dell of my grandfather's scrap of land to the coast of the bay. She would tell me, and I remember well, of the deserted castles that lined the shores. Most of them hardly stood at all. The earth's probably swallowed the majority of them up by now. But they stood enough then, and when little Anne Donnovin would go down to the grassy outcroppings that overlooked the loch where they rested she would explore those castles alone. Nothing could tame her long enough to keep her away from them and indoors with her three quiet sisters, not even her devil of an Irish mother—which is why my grandfather loved her the best. Aye, she belonged to those castles, and they to her. She wouldn't let a day go by without paying at least one a visit. Most were bright and airy, missing walls here and there. Piles of medieval stone, crumbled mortar and fallen archways around courtyards were most of them. There she'd play princess with her imaginary court of knights and mythical creatures and the like that any little girl would be plenty prone to make-believe. But the other castles were dark and frightening, intact and enclosed with enormous wooden doors that had shut out the rest of the world for ages. But, though she feared them, these were the ones that held the most breathtaking of treasures, while the valuable entrails of the more open castles had long since been stolen away and auctioned off. There was one in particular, the only one that was actually a part of her father's land, that for years she had avoided, not even daring to look into its windows—like the empty eyes sockets of a corpse, she would tell me. There had been many stories among the people in the village about that one. Said it was haunted, possessed, cursed, booby-trapped and everything in between. Not even the town's bravest men were a match for the superstition surrounding it. She was content to let it be... well, perhaps not completely. Curiosity was never a stranger to her. It was just that she never really had a reason to go near the thing until her father received word that the taxman would be upon them if the family's debts weren't paid. It was a ridiculous idea and absolutely forbidden by her parents, but young Anne was certain that whatever that monstrous thing held was of value enough to pay off the property. And so she finally decided that the only thing left to do was to conquer her fear and seek out the castle's treasures."

Liam paused and when he did a fit of coughing overcame him with the deep intake of air. The sheer force of those coughs jarred him back and forth where he lay, alarming Raoul and Christine with their severity. But when they jumped to assist him he resisted their help. In a short time, his breathing returned to normal and the dreadful hacking ceased. Against Raoul's insisting that he should return to his rest and obeying Christine's urge for more, he pressed on with his story.

"She told only her late grandfather, bedridden and living under her mother's care in her own house, of her plan to save the family from eviction. In return, he smiled and gave the little girl a tiny brass lion. The very one you have there, ma'amoiselle. And when he did he said, 'Take it. May the Lord protect you and the Lion reassure you. Do not fear the dark, child. Hold tight to the Lion, for only when you believe the true self is there can it melt the fear at your feet with its roar and allow you safe passage into the darkness.'"

Christine's eyes widened, her heart raced and the hair on every inch of her flesh stood straight on end at the very pulse of those words. A deep, empowered feeling welled up from what felt to be the depth of her own soul, if she wasn't mistaken by the sudden rush. It felt spiritual enough. It was as if she had been waiting to hear those words her entire life. It was as if a real lion's roar shook the world beneath her and had reached upward to send a quiver through her spine. The experience was frightening but more pleasurable than anything she could have ever imagined. A short, enraptured "oh" of ecstasy broke from her without control, seeming to come up from somewhere other than the throat. Watching her, Raoul began to worry but did not try to stop what he was powerless to.

"Why a lion?" Liam carried on. "You see, the legend among the villagers and their ancestors was that not long after the dawn of Ireland's time a terrible age fell over the land to punish the wicked deeds of the people there. For thirty years the sun did not set in the sky. Not even the clouds would come to hide it and because the clouds did not come not a drop of rain fell to the thirsty soil for three decades solid. There was no night and for thirty years the land was cast into unforgiving brightness that scorched the flesh and disillusioned the idea of time and place. Many abandoned hope and escaped their homeland, many perished, but a handful of small tribes were said to have stayed to live off of the fish from the sea and underground springs along the eastern coast. They endured the blistering drought and lack of food with visions in their eyes that they might one day be saved from the sun's fury and see night fall upon their once fertile land again. Then on the final day of the thirtieth year, it was said that the brilliant figure of a lion appeared in the sky, and with the curl of his lip let out an earth-shaking bellow to frighten the sun down from the sky. Night came over the land and with it fell a great rain. The rain poured for days on end and the thunder was—and still is—the mightiest ever heard. It's said that the thunder of Ireland is the great lion's roars as he reminds the days and nights and rains and droughts to keep their steady turn. And knowing this legend as well as she knew her own name, my mother took the little brass figure as her own. At first the little thing terrified her. She feared...the _emptiness_ of its eyes and the way it seemed to be soulless and threatening under the cold hard metal. But when her trembling hand held it fast it warmed with her own body heat and seemed to have a life of its own. Suddenly she loved it, remembering the great lion that had saved her nation and believing that it could help save her own family."

Christine burst with soft, unbridled excitement, "And did it?"

"Aye," Liam winked impishly, "In the old castle she found a grand medieval tapestry that turned out to be worth 55,483 pounds on the block and a good number of other little trappings that would sustain the Donnovins for years to come."

Then he gave an anguished sigh. The delight fell from his expression in an instant. The battered man turned his gaze blankly to the window opposite him.

"She left them behind in a fit of rage somewhere along in her seventeenth year. Something her mother had said to upset her, I suppose; the two never did get along, I'm afraid. She left for the city and never saw or heard word from them ever again. She and my wild father—if the man was fit to be called such a thing—stayed in Dublin for three or so years where my older brother, Ron, and I were born. Claude was never stable, couldn't hold a job to save his worthless life, and spent most of my infancy scouring for a place to make decent living and gambling with what money we did have in between. When I was barely walking, he paid the way somehow to herd us back to his own his own homeland. I've spent the rest of my miserable life in Paris. We lived above the printing shop that my father schemed his previous business partner out of ownership of for God knows how long. Once we were finally settled, my mother bore four other children, three of which died. After the last she was so worn and sick that it would have been a mercy for her to die giving birth. The poor woman had always urged me to go off on my own, though I always told myself I wouldn't abandon her for anything in the world. And I probably wouldn't have, if my father hadn't have turned me out onto the streets when he finally decided I was old enough to fend for myself. I was just another mouth to feed. Sixteen and a half was good and old enough. That was the last I ever saw of my mother. She was...screaming at her husband from the top of her lungs through the doorway that I was just a child, I wasn't ready... I would freeze and die on my own."

He laughed callously, recalling her words, "Such encouragement to send a son out into the world with, eh? But she didn't send me out alone. The night before I was exiled from the only house and family I had ever known she gave me the lion. I didn't think much of it but she knew very well what I was to be facing. She hoped it would unlock something braver in me the way it had done her. That it would make me stronger. Now look at me. It's not possible to get any lower than this."

Liam paused again but this time his illness did not condemn him. Silence and stillness fell stale over the moment.

"The lion...is worth so much..."

His eyes became transfixed where it was nestled in Christine's grasp.

"...but so little in my hand. It has to..._connect_...with something to work its wonders. I trust that it does have power, but nothing I was ever able to reach," Liam admired his mother's tiny memento, speaking softly.

"So you're saying the lion is a deity," implied Raoul cleverly as he finished off the last of a glass of brandy he had stolen earlier from the nearby side table. He wasn't aware that he had interrupted something unseen.

"No, mess'ieur." Liam met him eye to eye again in the most deep-reaching fashion Raoul had ever experienced.

"Then what?"

"The lion is a guiding part of the unconscious ...an animus, mess'ieur."

Raoul couldn't help opposing the urchin's unorthodox notions, careful not to come off too harshly, "Surely you don't believe in such a thing... a simple figurine somehow connected to the _soul_ of all things. I mean, _really_, if that is what you're getting after. I do see the significance it has to the myth, but other than that... it's an inanimate piece of brass. I don't see it as being anything more than symbolic. An inspirational _deity_ should be the word you're looking for."

Liam was not offended in the least but rather seemed to enjoy such a prominent fellow's interest in his own lowly matters.

"The lion itself may be a mere symbol, but it is the only physical part of that animus we can truly grasp."

"Oh, Raoul, let him be! He is in no condition to be arguing back and forth with the likes of your thick head," Christine chastised her partner's insolence then returned to Liam, holding the figure before him in earnest.

"Here," she insisted in her sweetest of tones, "if it really is...whatever you say it is... you should probably have it back."

Liam only stared up at the blank ceiling, reveling in her tenderness. Peace closed both of his eyes and, blindly, he wrapped the tepid little figure back into her hand. "You experience something from it that I cannot, ma'amoiselle. Perhaps you are the only one who can understand it the way my mother did. Or perhaps not. Either way, keep it. After all, what lady wouldn't like a lion to protect her in the darkness?"

Christine drew back at the strange nature of his last few words. His accents fell in the most stirring of places and seemed to cast a shadow over the phrase. It echoed in her mind for some reason or another, the way a person's dying words could. The feeling was downright ominous. Was there something within the nature of his tone that would flip the meaning of the words themselves? Liam's harmless, wounded expression shown through the goodwill the phrase was meant to cast. But the overt shroud of danger to the edge of the sounds of the words themselves disturbed her. She wondered if he was trying to tell her something. She wondered if her mind was beginning to play intricate tricks on her sense of mental balance.

She wondered if she was having a relapse...

A pause of restless blankness passed between the seconds until she was able to find her words.

"I'm not sure what you mean, Liam…I mean, I _understand_ but..."

The tormented fellow's eyes did not open. A strange serenity enveloped his voice—as if he had waited an eternity to say what would finally bring him blessed relief:

"The burden you carry... it's as plain as day in your eyes, miss. I know what it looks like. I've lived in the deepest, darkest slums and I know exactly what that sort of pain looks like. Promise this worthless wretch that you will never try to act stronger than you truly are. It **_will_** break you. It will break you down until there is nothing left of you. Promise me you'll keep the lion. Maybe it will remind you that there is more to yourself than...—oh, I don't believe you ever told me your name, love. Forgive me."

"Christine..." she choked as painfully as he had at the beginning of his tale, wishing he had finished what he had begun to say, as he had been so eerily accurate. "Christine Daaé. And you must never ask for my forgiveness. I haven't the right to give it out... not with all I've done."

Raoul thought of it, but either he hadn't the will or the time to stop her from kissing the poor, sickly man through the filth of his cheek. Her lips did not remain there long, but her innocent sincerity was felt. Deeply. Liam's tarnished blue eyes, hardly matching the pure hue of her own, remained closed behind their bruised lids, but there was no mistaking, even through the thickest of street grime, the blush that melted so quickly over his face.

"You are a very kind soul, 'saint Daaé'," he grinned shamelessly, "Though I can't imagine anyone having done worse things than I."

Christine clinched the lion tighter into her chest, close enough that, if such a thing were to be true, it could have been brought to life by her intense, swelling heartbeat.

She had no intention of being so unrefined as to say, "Try me."

* * *

_**TQ-** Excuse the authoress if she gets a little too "Jungian-happy" within the duration of this story...especially in psychologically/metaphorically driven chapters such as 'dis one. She has to constantly remind herself that the guy's theories weren't fully recognized until, what, 1960s-ish? Just as a little side note, Liam's ideas here are a little ahead of his time but they fit in with the oncoming driving forces of the story too well to resist. Let's just say he had a lot of time on his hands to contemplate the depths of the human mind while living off the streets. Right-o...I'll just blame it on my own animus and move on then..._


	5. Pax: 4: The Sureness of Uncertainty

**Book I: Pax**

_Chapter 4: The Sureness of Uncertainty_

* * *

_At the very same hour of the very same day in the very same city on the very same street where the fateful meeting between young maiden and the suffering waif had occurred, a figure—cloaked heavily so that voluptuous dark fabric spilled over the shoulders and danced with every motion, hiding the bowed head in a most elegant sort of way—passed through the open streets seamlessly, unnoticed. A gossamer snow had begun again its taciturn flight down from the heavens to rest in the grime of the earth below. Skies of gray, as would be imaginable, but with great contrast to the mire beneath them and to the patchwork of gothic buildings and all other unmerciful watchmen of architecture; these things shackled the soul to the dirty world below. No matter the color, the free, open sky above has always served as a beacon of hope, even in man's darkest hour._

_The horse which carried the figure, a small white gelding as average as any, baulked in his paces when confronted with an abandoned strip of pink taffeta fabric lying in the gutter snow at his feet. The nostrils flared and the hind legs shuffled to and fro with worry. Indeed, such a shred of dainty femininity was quite out of place in such harsh surroundings. Instead of reprimanding the animal for its petty alarm, however, the figure patted the hide of its neck and whispered some soft, low reassurance into one of the flickering ears. The horse eased on immediately, trampling the delicate strip of fabric that had once been a part of one of a certain Good Samaritan's best frocks._

_The figure and its mount melted into the dark of a nearby back-alley without even the sound of hooves upon ice. Not a soul milling about that bitter late morning took notice of the figure, nor of the tiny tea-stained envelope that it clutched obscurely in the left gloved hand. Even if someone had taken voluntary notice of that peaceable presence, there would have been no reason for a second glance._

_Apparitions were common among the clamor, you see._

* * *

"One would think," said Raoul coarsely, slamming the door of their pensive new acquaintance's room to emphasize himself, "that it would be common knowledge not to _kiss_ filthy homeless men off the streets."

Christine riled with distaste, "He isn't just 'some filthy homeless man'. You know better than that, or you wouldn't have nursed him. Furthermore, I don't appreciate being told whom I can and can't kiss. And even out of pity! Would this be a case of caution or of insecurity on _your_ part?"

"Neither. It's a case of common sense...or general lack thereof," his voice threw lightly. He eyed her with a squinted wariness.

"Excuse me, then, for throwing caution to the wind and risking life and limb to show just one ounce of decent sympathy. If I contract leprosy, I'll make sure to send you a long, pleasant letter from the colony of the unclean detailing how insidious my lunatic insistence upon doing the exact opposite of what I'm expected to do is. I do wonder how much common sense it requires to act like some sort of backhanded maid and cower in every situation, waiting for someone to come along, hold my hand and instruct me on what I should and shouldn't do to avoid killing myself. I really do wonder, Raoul, I really do."

She felt a boldness that she had never experienced before as she dogged him down the hall, carrying a tray of soiled gauze and medicinal bottles whilst spewing sharp retorts. Something coursed through every life-giving vein within her. Something harsh and fiery, but not at all unpleasant. Invigorating, actually. She had never dared say anything quite this snappish to him before and derived an almost perverse satisfaction from the involuntary rush of defensive acid. The lion kept quietly to itself, hidden away in the bodice of her dress.

It wasn't that Raoul wasn't sure what to say to this. He could have said a million things. Instead, he waved on politely as the words flew past in his mind. It wasn't that he was taken aback. After all those months, he had come to accept that she would be _"this way"_ at times. But he still could not bring himself to reply. Perhaps that was why.

"Will you stop that bickering!" Mrs. Boston sauntered up from behind with another tray that she had taken Liam's tea upstairs with. "It's enough to drive a poor old woman to the bottle."

"Honestly, I wouldn't _at all_ mind joining you," sneered the Vicomte dryly, though too rigid and dignified to be taken as a joke.

"Yes, well," the frazzled caretaker shuffled her tray to one hand in order to straighten her skirt then regarded him sweetly, "let's see if we can't find something a little more civilized."

She gave Christine a cheerful nod. "Hurry along to the guest-room, dear, I've laid out a new dress if you would oblige us to change. As for you, monsieur, I'sh'll meet you in the sun-room shortly. If all's well down there the scones haven't been cremated...yet."

Mrs. Boston then promptly demanded that Christine hand over the tray she was carrying so that she might go right away to ready herself sufficiently. She insisted that she take it down for her atop the one she was already carrying. But as it was being given over, the stout old hen yanked it quickly into herself, pulling Christine very well within whispering range.

"Do _try_ to redeem yourself, _please_, or meet me halfway at the very least. By Jove, child! I've never seen anyone so hell-bent on throwing their prospective future out with the dishwater in all my ragged days. Straighten up! Don't forget the perfume he bought you…and I had better see you downstairs at that table by the time my tea is ready, or God so help me I will _drag_ you down by your pretty little ear!" the woman hissed, careful not to let the gentleman overhear her. Mrs. Boston glanced over at him when she was quite finished with her awkward instructions and cast him a charming closed smile, teeth gritting beneath.

"Thank you, Mrs. Boston, you're _much_ too kind," complied the young lady aloud with a hint of smug pretension.

Christine was released and shooed off down the hallway immediately. Mrs. Boston would have no more of her biting remarks. Besides, she had plenty of primping ahead of her to address. She looked over her shoulder before entering into the guest-room to find the two laughing—at her no doubt—as they rounded the stairs.

Her spine gave a twitch of resentment at their fraughtless joviality. Neither seemed to sense how internally disrupted she had become since her almost ethereal encounter with the wounded half-blood. They acted as if what had so miraculously taken place within the room before—although she wasn't entirely sure of what had taken place herself—had never occurred, while Christine remained rocked to her very core. She gave herself much due credit for camouflaging so well the metaphysical refuse left behind by that earthquake of a certain undefined awakening. They hadn't noticed.

Liam's solemn, hidden prophecy had not phased Raoul in the least. He seemed utterly content to sit down to tea and ridiculous English biscuits in the sun-room without paying the urchin a second thought. He hadn't even mentioned a word about the experience since they had left the poor fellow to rest—aside from the decidedly brash comment made about her display of sincerity, of course. Other than his concern for her, he remained completely obtuse. Not to mention Mrs. Boston, who was so eager to pawn her off as if she were cheap costume jewelry that there was no time to consider anyone's frivolous emotional imbalance.

Desperately, she tried to suppress the depreciating thoughts of both of them that had been so freely mud-slung around her conscious. Christine hated to regard people unkindly. It wasn't at all in her nature... at least it hadn't always been. Still, she could not excuse herself. Strangers with little metal lions were to be placed at the bottom of her list of concerns. The happy ending of this dormant period in her life was closing in. Nothing would get in its way. Not even she.

She tried to think of Raoul. Tried to think of looking somewhat presentable for him. After all, did he deserve anything less for enduring the pain of her recovery, for keeping his word, for holding out for her until this dreadful storm passed? Mrs. Boston, in all her prudence, had been right. The storm had indeed passed—or so it seemed—and he was becoming restless. Still, she was bombarded daily with doubt, blunt insecurity that forced her to turn a blind eye from what lay ahead to what lay over her shoulder, or to what simply captured her wandering fancy.

Christine felt the bronze lion press awkwardly into her as she moved. The sensation was almost sinful. A single flame, like those in the hearth, seemed to lap inward from where the figurine was nestled through every physical nerve, leaving her with a peculiar after-pulse of singed ardor. It lasted but a half second, but left her with a strong, dangerous reminder not to forget that it had come and gone. It was as if the pulsation had a mind of its own. She quickly removed the lion from its rather precarious place to fold it once again into her hand.

Again, she tried to think of Raoul but her thoughts turned immediately to Liam and his obscure, seemingly insignificant remark about the lion and its supposed powers of auspicious protectorship...or whatever it was he truly meant. It was slowly consuming her mind, holding her own silent ruminations hostage against her will. How she wanted to care less about anything but what awaited her patient but restively downstairs, more than ready to lay at her feet everything she had ever dreamed of. Happiness. Prosperity. Security. She had only to clear her thoughts, to not lose sight of her first and foremost concern. To be married off as quickly and as surely as possible, to not be swayed by such magical, childish things that had once so nearly sealed her fate. But she dared not think back now. Christine had endured thus far. She was determined not to retreat two steps after one advanced.

Up to that moment, she had no time to take full account of her previous disturbing experience, but as the knob to the guest-room door twisted in her grasp, she began to realize what Liam had possibly meant about the lion being a guiding force. The realization would unknowingly weaken her will against the wandering thoughts, the sordid visions, the burgundy dreams that would take her up in the middle of the night and force her to submit to the past's ravenous seduction. The _dreams_—even the mere word struck terror into the pit of her soul. For what lay behind was constantly at her heels; she had to be careful of where she allowed her thoughts to stray.

Christine quickly brushed away the risqué endeavors of her restless soul to concentrate on the task at hand.

The beginning of that hazy realization would lay fallow in the back of her mind for quite some time after.

* * *

Raoul wrinkled the morning paper in one anxious hand. He drummed the tabletop with the other, attention fixed to change on anything that moved or sounded. It could very easily be said that he was not at peace.

"At ease, at ease!" chortled Mrs. Boston upon her return to the sun-room with a pair of empty stemmed glasses in each hand. "You'll give yourself a heart attack stirring about so."

She waddled over to place a saucer of cream near his feet where lurked a longhaired cat with a coat of monochrome, passing an affectionate side over his legs. Mrs. Boston reached to find its head and patted it kindly when it took to her offering with a mewl of delight.

The Vicomte laughed reservedly, "I see Alphonse will be more than happy to dine with me this afternoon. At the very least he isn't quite as mouthy as my usual company."

"I haven't the slightest what's gotten into that girl," Mrs. Boston shook her head as she placed an empty goblet before him. Her bun of silvery hair had been fixed since they had come off the streets, held tightly in place with a small, carved ivory comb.

"She's upset, it's only that simple. You were there with her today. What happened was much too much for her to handle in her condition still."

"Her 'condition'," she snorted almost mockingly, "I still see she has no excuse to act so—"

"I do." He paused from stroking Alphonse, who had demanded it so loudly. "It's my responsibility to be more understanding of her. We all must be."

"And you _have_ been, monsieur. If any man could be more compassionate or understanding, I should have to call him a patron saint. You've endured more than a lion's share of grief with that poor child, and I for one believe you're well entitled to what you've expected of her."

Raoul gazed forlornly out the windowed walls of the room to his own expansive garden. Everything lay barren. The frost had preyed without mercy upon every bush, tree and flower. Beyond the fence stood the oppressing figures of the city's buildings, staunch and clear in the sterile air. Beauty had given way to lifelessness, neither with more or less wrath than usual. So why did it seem to him that this winter had come on more savagely than ever before? Chill seemed to permeate the glass as if there was nothing to keep it out at all. He regretted having such an important lunch in such a presently unpleasant place when the dining room would have done just as well if not better, not entirely because of the cold but rather the gloominess of the surroundings. It was a terrible time of the year to be involved in such dealings, but he feared what he needed to say would have to be addressed now or never.

"One thing I learned long ago, Mrs. Boston," he addressed her with a tight smirk, "is not to expect anything from Christine…whatsoever."

"So as not to set yourself up for disappointment? I see, sir, that I may be giving you more credit than you deserve," she jested, settling down in the stray chair quite near him as the table had been set and all else was in place.

He replied warmly, "Not at all. It's only an issue of winning her assurance. It wouldn't matter if I offered her the world in a fancy hatbox; if the mind can't be eased, I'll have nothing—whatever I expect, no matter how small, would be impossible for her. Don't you see? Nothing comes of _wanting_ and _expecting_. She has to be ready of her own accord; pressing her will only make things worse. And what happened this morning won't be much of a help, either."

"Good grief! Try to reason that woman out any further, and I can only imagine the most terrible sort of headache," cried Mrs. Boston.

"I've had plenty of time to reason it—more than I'd like. I had always thought…if she was free…God, if she were only free, there would be nothing to it. I'd have her as she would have me, just the way we planned it. But freedom isn't something I can give her—nothing I've ever given her before. Christine must still find it for herself, though I've been so certain lately that she's had ample time…"

His voice broke off into something low and sustained before returning, "…I see I may have misjudged. She just needs a bit more time…apparently."

He seemed to speak absently, to no soul in particular, with eyes upturned to the roof of windows above. There, a small wren hopped about the glass, scratching to keep balance against the winds and causing a scuttle of ruckus in the hopeless process.

Alphonse was equally intrigued. It would seem by looking at him that he was trying to reason a way up there. The cat abandoned the cover of the table to follow the bird's path across the room.

Raoul found himself lost between a promise, a dream and everyday life. This situation was beginning to rot him from the inside out, though he hid it well. While his words were confident, he had persevered in never once deceiving himself. He wanted control, wanted to secure every detail in its place, wanted to be _sure_…all of which he feared he would ever taste. More than anything, though, he wanted to hear her say she was sure.

'_Sureness_,' he thought, 'Now there's an illusion.'

In terrible truth, he knew exactly why he and his reluctantly betrothed were still so ill at ease, even after nearly a full year had passed: Christine was having "those dreams" again. They would manifest themselves, or so she told him, only in her sleep but struck with such force that their effects could be felt for days at a time. Raoul was certain they were distorted memories, that she was drawing up the past in the back of her mind while her conscious was well off-guard in sleep. But she would never confide the nature of these nightmares. Not to him. Not to anyone. It had been about three full months since her last upset. He remembered well how a doctor had to be called in the middle of the night to sedate her—it had been one of the worst she'd experienced. Since then they had become dormant and so had his worry.

Now, however, he was almost certain she hadn't been telling him, keeping quiet to give the illusion that they had stopped. How considerate of her! To keep him gnawing the bit with false hope this way while she remained completely overwrought with emotional tension and continued to push him away was blatant cruelty. He knew the night visions were the culprits, otherwise she would be more than ready to give him her final answer, for it was the dreams he guessed that were contorting her ability to make a firm decision. They were turning her from him, that was a given, but it was Christine alone who had to gain the strength to block them out. He knew she had the ability, but did she have the will…did she _want_ to?

Raoul silently cursed the urchin, his hypnotic nonsense and that hideous lion he had given her. Liam had caused enough trouble by stirring the already stirred lady out of her questionable stability. But to start babbling this "lion" propaganda like mad on what could have very well been his deathbed, like some sort of omen…Raoul feared what damage was already done to Christine's delicate internal balance. And what perfect timing! Somehow, he would have to get the entire idea out of her head (how easy getting _any _wild notion out of her head had always been!). Otherwise, he felt in the pit of his despair that they both faced another year's worth of "dreams"—the very ones that had always been successful in pushing his wedding day further and further from reach, just as he was being pushed from her.

None of this he had already resolved not to mention to the nosy Mrs. Boston. To gather his thoughts, he knew only that he was tired of waiting but would have to anyway. All was at a loss... unless he succeeded that afternoon.

"But if you don't intend to press her then what have you called this all together for?" Mrs. Boston interrupted his train of thought—a train that was well on its way to derailing anyway.

Raoul sat back in all easiness, not a care slipping through his voice or self-assured expression. "I can't ask my own fiancé to a simple lunch without plotting some secret agenda?"

She studied him closely before twitching her nose in shrewd response, "Not with that glint in your eyes, monsieur. I don't believe a word of it. May I remind you that I lived with a man for 47 years... you aren't fooling anyone."

Mrs. Boston stood to place a motherly hand on one of his shoulders, "I'm sure it won't take her much longer…to realize, that is. Your patience never ceases to amaze me sir. Christine will be broken of whatever has had her on edge in no time and all will be in your graces after that. After all, good things _do_ so often come to those who wait…"

Her tone soothed him without question, if only for a moment, though it felt strangely rehearsed. Smoothing back the still dampened hair from his forehead, Raoul began to think that perhaps it would do him well not to bring up the serious matter at hand quite as forwardly as he had planned. He would not ask for a straight answer while she remained so quietly distraught. It was selfless, probably causing him another sleepless night or more of uncertainty. In the meanwhile, he would draw her in. Somehow, he knew he must find a way to remove everything that could possibly stifle her from regaining confidence in him…including, if need be, Liam.

Just then, something in the doorway leading out to the hall caught his attention. A flash of blue. The rustling of skirts. Mrs. Boston had not picked up the sound. She only stood idly at his side, watching the cat dart about after some imaginary vermin beneath the furniture. The Vicomte smiled fervently and gave a sudden startling cough to gain the old woman's attention.

"If you would be so kind, Mrs. Boston, as to go ahead and bring out the tea and scones before they cool, I don't think it should be that terrible of an infraction."

The stout madame immediately fumbled for the door upon his word. "Of course! They'll be right out, monsieur…. Ohhh, where is she?!"

Christine flattened herself against the opposite wall as her caretaker exited in a ruffled tither. She slipped into the sun-room with incredible silent prowess, as delighted not to be noticed as Raoul was that she hadn't. She approached him daintily with both hands behind her back, kept occupied with the brass lion beneath the large silk ribbon that adorned her most prepossessing royal blue dress. They remained there as she bent to lay a fleeting kiss across his lips.

'Here's to luck,' he thought, not even able to hide his own anxiety from himself anymore. It was there, it was real, but so was her sincerity.


	6. Pax: 5: Clandestine Progress

**Book I: Pax**

_Chapter 5: Clandestine Progress_

* * *

She released him easily. In all seriousness, he had expected a smart remark regarding common sense...or general lack thereof. Instead, she respected the moment. He reveled in it. It took only a kiss to right the unrest in the surrounding air and silence the warning dissent of his suspicions. All at once the chill went away, color returned to the surrounding fabrics, the patterned rugs, his own disconsolate face, and for an instant he thought to have heard the garden vegetation just beyond the glass walls of the surname rustle beneath their funeral veils of white; a fragile but enduring portent of distant spring—or of hope.

Christine swiftly took the white wrought iron chair opposite of him, biting her lower lip in the ingenuous sort of way he had come to fawn over. She apparently waited for him to say something but in all honesty, he drew up blank, delighted by her respectful sensibility. It is one thing to be delighted, it is also one thing to be relieved. It is yet another entirely to be struck speechless with both at the same time. Being a creature of higher sociality, Raoul found himself captivated by such a display of quiet charm in a woman. Though small, the "gesture" was fulfilling—fulfilling enough to cure the insatiable anxiety that threatened to swallow him whole.

She waited still, quiet, dutifully, as was expected of a lady. The young nobleman thought perhaps Christine was adapting better to the more refined society they were embedded in than he originally thought. Enough had been demanded of her since he plucked the fair lady up from the rather disguisedly sordid world whence she came. She had never been too widely accepted within the elite inner circle, more or less because of her unjust label of infamy among a scandalizing handful. In the beginning she had experienced an enormous amount of difficulty in adjusting to the special social requirements that were to be maintained. Though her emotions tended to run away with her, oftentimes the trauma could be blamed and justly. The shortcomings of her origins had been readily frowned upon just as well as her reputation. Still, an opera house allotted a great deal more respectability than a whorehouse. Raoul was grateful for this but ended up reminding himself that he could care less, convinced heart and soul that her love ran as deep as the Seine.

"Well?"

Her intonation was fierce enough to gain his attention, but the coquettish slant of her freshly-painted lips granted room enough to let him speak.

"Well...I judge it would be right to ask if you checked on our..._ahem_... guest on your way down," said he, slightly loosening the white silk cravat about his neck with a single finger.

Raoul hadn't meant to say the first thing that jumped into his head. Why the smutty waif was the first thing that jumped into his head anyway was a mystery not worth exploration while there was business to attend to.

It was when her confident expression fell like rubble from a burning building that he regretted mentioning Liam. He had made the first fatal mistake. The tea hadn't even been served yet.

"I didn't. I hadn't the time..." she replied meekly, eyes downcast.

Raoul studied her ringlets of honey blonde hair as they had been carefully tied up into a lush blossom with blue ribbon in back. The intricacy of the gown with its many tiny bows along the gathered sides, stunning thin lace of the collar which gave an elegantly squared dip down the chest and the luscious royal velvet which fanned up in the middle beneath the collar's angular outline, contrasted with the simple, stunning purity of her porcelain flesh. Every detail of favor she withheld had been brought out front and center so as not to be missed even if one wasn't looking. The roses of her cheeks. The dynamic fullness of her lashes. The delicate curve of each brow. Such was the care that had been taken to stun him. And for a moment it had. Only her eyes that had hitherto been stricken with grief remained that way to leave the wholeness of her seraphic perfection in near shambles.

Christine reached to the middle of the table absently for one of the ringed cloth napkins Mrs. Boston had set out. In its stead, her hand met his and she gave a tiny gasp of surprise. Their gazes crossed instantly...tenderly.

"No need to fret over him after all." He pressed the cool, smooth back of her palm against his lips, using every last bit of his debonair finesse in hopes of repairing what had been broken. "I don't mean to trouble you with it...terribly sorry."

Christine insisted calmly otherwise, "Oh, quite the contrary, dear...not in the least. I do care what happens to him, poor thing. When he fell into my arms, Raoul, I felt could have died right then and there. In that very instant he put his life into my hands. God, such desperation! I could feel it through every inch of him. He needed _me_. He could have thrown himself to anyone in the crowd and just...hoped. But it was _me_. He gave himself to _me_. I-I don't think I could live knowing I hadn't done everything possible to help him. It isn't his fault after all, how he's this way."

Raoul rested her delicate hand, which had begun to lightly tremble, between both of his own. It was simple to recognize how naïve her reasoning was. The manner in which she had fallen into that squabble just at the moment of his collapse was purely coincidence, not that he had _chosen_ her, a complete stranger whom he could not have even physically _seen_ after being bloodied in both eyes so profusely. Otherwise, how could she have known what previous intentions this stranger had? He had been so quickly labeled an innocent, though they had no idea what kind of matters he had been settling in that street brawl. But Raoul could not bear trying to reason this out with her, even when he knew a handsome toll may very well be paid for it. He could not convince himself to break her from this somehow premonitory feeling of belief in this fate business.

To look into her eyes right then was to look into the eyes of a woman who knew, without question, what she wanted. He saw there a deep need, one that reached to him for support but to the beggar in compassion. What she wanted _most_ was for that need to be fulfilled: for Liam—the man who had spoken to her in the voice of a prophet but with the words of a dear friend, the man whose life she had been entrusted with in a violent instant and had redeemed—to recover. What Raoul could not deny was that he wanted her certainty for himself. He hungered for it, grasped out for it in the middle of the night. A flicker of jealousy was apparent within. How a man whom she had known for only a few hours could have from her this sort of blind devotion enraged the notably selfless nobleman. To deny this lust would be blasphemy against himself. To remain in such a state of emotional need and angst would eventually become unendurable. But even so, he would not break her spirit. There was nothing to be done about it but to give the poor man his blessing. He would not speak his mind when she was in such a fragile condition, for Raoul, being though impatient, had retained through hardship that youthful heart of gold and sense of sensibility.

"Now, now...of course not." His comforting voice became low and inviting, "We will care for him as long as we must. I see no reason why the fellow shouldn't stay until he is back on his feet."

And then he thought, 'What in God's name am I saying?' shortly after, realizing that his mouth was moving faster than his thoughts were processing, promising things that weren't meant to be promised—a common side effect of lovesickness.

In defiance of his own resolve, he continued to spout off, "He seems trustworthy enough and shouldn't take much else but cleansing of the wounds and rest and that sort of thing if it turns out he can successfully heal himself. In either case, I will have a doctor look at him as soon as it can be arranged. The lungs may be infected from the sound of it. Nothing that can't be repaired, I'm sure. He's young and seems to be pretty stalwart on the whole. We'll do what we can, whatever it takes..."

"Oh, how wonderfully kind of you!" she lit, clutching his hands even tighter, "I will do most of his tending...as much as I'm capable of."

He was worried now, almost terrified. In telling her that Liam could indefinitely stay he had set into motion something that could not be reversed.

"Only _when_," he eyed her strictly, "your morning lessons have been reinstated will I allow you to mind him regularly. And you must _behave_ yourself. We're lucky the man's even coming back after having to fight with you so. There is much preparation that still needs to be addressed; you simply can't afford to delay it any longer."

Christine let go of him. It was certain that he had made fatal mistake number the second: mentioning M. Lamourie, her dear, snidely nemesis. He hadn't meant to bring the issue up at what he hoped would be a lighter occasion, but something had to be done. Something in the realm of distraction. Something in the realm of...her career. Nothing would sour her more than suggesting that she take up with singing again, though she would never express her displeasure outright. It was an excuse nonetheless.

"Liam isn't some kind of reward for reasoning with that _tyrant_, Raoul, he's a human being that will need care and time to recover. Petty things like voice lessons are not to take precedence over another life...or so I've always believed."

He shook his head piteously, retaining the same besotted simper only because he thought the world of her, "We've already discussed this—_thoroughly_. You will be resuming your lessons with M. Lamourie on the third of February and every day thereafter until he sees fit to meet with you less frequently. From then on out the instruction will be held at your flat, at promptly ten-fifteen each day, so there will be no need to have you passing through the markets at odd hours of the morning to come here. I'll have the piano transported from here to your apartment immediately since I've no need for the thing myself. You must trust me when I say you need this...all of this... Christine. Nothing, I believe, will do you more good. There have been far too many strings pulled to have you backing yourself out of your agreement to reassume the instruction. If you are ever to set foot onstage again it is absolutely imperative that you do as I say. Now...have I made myself _explicitly_ clear, darling?"

Christine opened her mouth to protest. If it had been possible she would have then told him, as she had done a thousand times before, that she was nowhere near fit to have dealings in music yet, of all things! And that Monsieur Lamourie was impossible and that his breath smelt of cheap wine and stale andouillette and that he used the word "Egod!" like some sort of irate Briton much too much. The man had the voice of crow, the stringency of a decrepit headmistress, and a gall more voracious than any thick-naped, bullheaded rabble-rouser in the country. He was not at all very good looking for a man of thirty-seven and Christine even believed him to have a genuine serpent's forked tongue. It would come out when he would carry on his lectures—verbal lashings to reprimand her disagreeable incompetence, rather—flickering in and out, tasting her hatred through the air. She was sure that hatred was what the pinch-faced autocrat lived off of.

To the rather cantankerous young diva, what the crotchety, middle aged, ex-composer saw fit was worth about as much compiled as all the raw sewage in Paris.

But instead of repeating her usual roast of the infamous voice teacher, she skirted her fingertips across the edge of the table's linen, cleared her throat and nodded in miserable understanding. Compliance simmered her blood and made her want to spit in the eye of anyone who dared cross her next. Raoul knew she did not like the man, nor did she find herself in Lamourie's favor. She wondered then why he insisted that she put up with him on a daily basis, under his rule in her own home, just for a chance to limp back out onto a stage. Christine swallowed back a most painful knot in the depths of her throat consisting of malicious contempt over the unfair matter that she wished so badly to unfetter...at the top of her lungs.

"There you are!" Mrs. Boston's nasal voice rang out from the doorway from which she entered pushing a small serving cart. Her indignant glare bore straight through Christine as she transported the decadent English pastries from cart to table. Seeming thoroughly at ease, the gentleman admired the scones in their lovely blue rice-paper holders, dressed to the viscera beneath golden pastry with berries of the freshly-harvested sort. Mrs. Boston was an accomplished cook, certainly when it came to the subtle native dishes of her homeland. The couple had become very well acquainted with English tea and such and were often apt to prefer the non-native tastes to the local usual while she had been serving them. However, it would take much more than British sweets to bring the strained relationship to full terms again.

Christine took up her tea and clutched it between tensed hands, glance shooting agitatedly between Raoul and the old madame.

"You've no reason to outwit me, Miss Daaé. I am well aware when I am not wanted," the old woman stuck out her wrinkled nose in a rather teasing manner, though Christine did not think it funny. Raoul nudged her beneath the table, indicating urgently with a small gesture of the hand for her to thank the woman.

"Forgive me, Nanette, I must have missed you on my way down," Christine uttered a delicate apology. "It wouldn't be an indignity to call for me next time. Oh, and the scones look lovely, darling. You do mean to spoil us!"

Mrs. Boston was pleased enough and resolved to herself to take the matter up with the young lady later, "I'll leave you both to them then...if it pleases you, shall I check on your fetid little beggar fellow?"

Christine winced. She couldn't help but catch the derogatory timbre of the remark and recalled what the old woman had said regarding Liam immediately after the violent altercation that morning. It was all too clear that the caretaker did not view him highly.

'Look at yourself, pompous old thing,' Christine thought brusquely, 'What have you done that makes you so much better than him?'

Raoul chimed with his usual gaiety, sensing the tension between the two women, "That would be splendid. Why don't you bring him up a loaf and a spot of our best wine. Anything left over from breakfast would do well offer too. Come to think of it, tell Badeau to prepare him whatever he'd like. His rest has been sufficient I think; insist that he must eat. The poor chap looks a fright...so terribly thin."

Mrs. Boston nodded, took up Alphonse's dish of cream, then pushed the cart out as quickly as she had entered without departing word to either. The expression with which she had exited could almost be considered as malignant. She had only expected to check to see if the Liam fellow wasn't dead or dying. Serving a beggar rich wine, bread or whatever else his indigent heart desired was not precisely what she had in mind. It was a crude disgrace, as a matter of fact. M. de Chagny couldn't have expected her to serve this cretin in the same way she served him. Abomination! The very idea was insuperable. The beggar would take full advantage of this kind treatment; after all, was not the Parisian street urchin the most notorious of con artists? They would find themselves robbed blind by morning. _Wicked Christine!_ Nanette Boston's spiteful conscious hissed, _Of all the plague you could possibly bring upon this household you arrange for me to be its stewardess!_

The Vicomte would not overrule his lady's wishes while he was so desperately trying to obtain her favor. The wretch would be living like a king if Christine insisted—being the improperly raised child that the caretaker of several months had determined she was and having no consideration for common rectitude as to even let such a creature in the house. Mrs. Boston would undoubtedly be asked to do all of his tending before long, or so she considered.

'No,' she thought to herself, 'it won't be done.'

Liam would be later left with an aging sliver of Roquefort and the cat's leftover dish of cream for which he would thank the old woman profoundly. The man had not eaten anything more than crumbs over the past five weeks. Before recently, a regular sustaining scrap hadn't been so far out of grasp, for then he obtained a regular yet meager livelihood, though an income nonetheless.

His last meal of any substantial consequence had, most surprisingly, been at the Café de la Paix, which turns its shapely, straight-edged face to admire the grand palatial opera across the square. From the corner at which he would often loiter—and on that glorious morning had been so fortunate as to afford a very small breakfast and sat out at a real table where real gentlemen and ladies would sit—the magnificent building seemed larger than life. At that time he had also been able to afford with his small wage (what he received for a bare minimum living a handful of weeks earlier, if you will recall) a rather ancient looking black redingote that he considered his best and wore it to this singular breakfast at which he would revere the food before him and the lovely establishment across the square. He considered the opera something of a sacred place, wafting out to the streets before her with an air of almost holy beauty that she demanded from every staring eye complete unfailing approbation. This kind of enamored attention was what the poor half-blood gave her and in return he could only stand back to gorge himself on her opulent majesty, never to set foot inside those walls. He wore his best for the grand lady, for she alone was the only thing that stood in that sadistic, desolate city which could warm his heart and captivate his spirit.

Winter had not seemed winter that morning. Through sleep congested eyes telltale of another restless night in the stable, the young man watched through what hemorrhage of crowd was left passing before the café. Two carriages had rested themselves before the enchanted building to let out whomever they carried. This intrigued him. The opera had not advertised another performance since its "grand" reopening earlier in the season—which, Liam observed, hardly a soul had attended—and it was far too early for cast rehearsals, that which he also observed. He was curious to know the nature of these new, rather well-off visitors to his lady's front door. To get a better view the beggar so naturally abandoned the cover of the ivy green and white umbrella along with the luxury known as a proper table, taking a sticky handful of Crêpe Suzette all at once to the curbside near the gutter where the opera could be seen at closer range. There he took a new seat, one less comfortable but considerably more enjoyable.

"He is right—she is the most beautiful," awed Liam aloud from the street corner, propped against a lamppost with the bright red strawberry juice tumbling messily down his chin and nearly forgetting what he had perched himself there to see. Out of the way of the crowd, he saw only the coattail of the man who had climbed out of the first carriage disappear into the opera's doors with a hearty laugh that could be heard all the way across the square. 'He's a good reason to,' thought Liam kindly, settling back to bask in the rays that slipped out of the above cloud's grasp. Gutter water from a winter morning's rain baptized his riding boots, mottled brown and ripe for retiring. As long as there was the great queen of fine architecture before him, though, he saw no reason to pity his tattered condition, for he knew of the underbelly she hid from the world and regarded it with the same awe as her stunning façade.

Never before had he been a witness to anything so wonderful. But after that strange morning at the café that to this day still stands to face the opera—whence Liam would take his last full meal for a considerable while—he had no need for a riding coat, and so he sold it, and no reason to ever return to revere his beautiful lady, and so he was filled with bitterness. The money from the coat too soon ran dry but the bitterness would linger and rot within.

That being said, it should also be brought to attention that before Mrs. Boston left the tired M. Beaucathrine to himself on very the afternoon of his arrival at the grand apartment of his savior's fiancé, she took subtly a gold key from the drawer of the writing desk in the far corner of the room. With that key she would subtly lock the large mahogany armoire which stood guard beside the dying embers of the hearth. With shifting eyes she took the key subtly out with her, leaving the fire to fade away and the battered man just as well.

He remained unaware of her convictions.

* * *

Raoul was prepared, more than prepared, to say what needed to be said. It was the method of bringing about what troubled him that troubled him. Christine had acquired a method of being rather impassive over her months of recovery. She took to moments without giving a hint of expression nor single clue as to what she was thinking, as was the case between them at that seemingly lonely table. Raoul played a dangerous guessing game with not a single indication on her part to draw from. What was to be done was to be done; he could not bear what he withheld any longer and so eased it out into the open.

"I would like, Christine, for you to show a bit more amenability than you have over these... trying... months. You told me that you would be ready to put yourself in the public eye again after you were granted enough time to become at ease with yourself. I think it is in your favor to suggest that you've had quite long enough to consider things and...well, I think it best that you consider what has been expected of you now..."

She did not care for the sweet taste of bribery that somehow coated his words, nor for what she expected him to say next. A quiver sent itself down her spine to compliment the chill in the air.

Raoul heaved a sigh before continuing, feeling too far from what he was meaning to express, "An invitation has been sent to us from the Comtesse Charlotte Maigny, my dear friend's own sister, to attend a private dinner party in honor of her husband who is to take leave for India within the next week. I though it would be becoming of you to sing something from your repertoire for them—I know that Charlotte would be delighted to give you a comfortable little venue to revive your talent; she had mentioned so herself that it would be a charming idea. But I will let you decide."

One could have cut through the tension in the air with a bread knife. Christine returned her cup of tea to the table and spoke in a near whisper, "If the Comtesse insists...if you insist."

A timid, almost sickly smile forced itself across her lips, shortly before the lion dropped from her hand to the floor. The need to state any objection she may have had dissipated. Raoul sensed the unmistakable sound of metal striking hardwood but did not draw attention to it. It was when she moved to pick it up that he stopped her abruptly, reaching across the table to lay a firm hand upon the young lady's shoulder. Without a word he demanded undivided attention. His stare was unmistakably intense. Christine returned to her seat in submission, though she wanted nothing more than to snatch up the memento, run to her guest-room, and deadbolt the door, never to emerge again.

Raoul had assured that he would not press her that morning. Now there he was, ready to stake his claim. Mrs. Boston's judgment hadn't faltered—he needed more than his next breath to know, but he would restrain this need as long as he could only for his lady's sake. In this selfless display of consideration, he caused himself pain that was almost too real to not be physical.

"There was a reason why I withheld that invitation from you. You see, Christine, I had planned to...make an announcement of sorts at this very reception."

"I see," her voice shook with uncontrollable tremors. All of the strength she had withheld up until then had deserted her. "You would like to tell them that I will be returning to the stage soon."

There was a wild urgency in her voice and throughout her expression. She had not meant to make such haste in telling him this, for in truth she was about ready to concern herself with opera again as she was to walk down an aisle. It was a miserable sacrifice, but if she could give him this much it was her hope that he would be satisfied as of then. But the bone she had thrown him would not last long... if it was to last at all. With all of her being, the young diva prayed like mad for the final judgment to be postponed.

"Exactly," he agreed, in no less painful distress but delighted that she was finally giving him the answers he desired, for this was the first time Christine had lent him firm assurance that she was even remotely prepared to begin her art again. "I wanted to be without a doubt that you are in fact ready to resume performance in the near future. Since the private offer you received from the gentlemen at the Théâtre du Châtelet I have wanted to release a bit of knowledge openly of your return since you agreed to it long before now. There's no question that you will need the respectable publicity. Now that you're certain I will be comfortable disclosing it at the dinner."

A treacherous wind threw itself against the glass from outside. Christine rose without warning and gave a start.

"That's quite all right, dear, I've no problem with your telling them. Just...try not to make such a great deal out of my return. That's all I really ask. Now I really should check to see if Mrs. Boston has thought to bring Liam fresh linens. It's getting colder..." said she in a waiver, knees shaking as she began to make a bolt from the table.

"But that isn't all, Christine. Sit, please," he gestured calmly to her chair. The dainty blonde obeyed, breath twittering faster than a hummingbird's wing-beat.

Raoul anxiously spooned a heap or five of sugar into the cup he had not yet touched. It was time.

"It may be, dearest, that we are ready to disclose something _else_—perhaps?" his intonation dove to something bold and serious. He dared not to look up from his tea and it was a jolly good thing that he hadn't, for then he would have witnessed his fiancé's propped up expression fall apart completely.

"I didn't mean to set all of this in your lap today, in all honesty I didn't. But you must know, Christine, that your poor Raoul has lost countless hours of sleep since we last discussed the terms of our marriage. To go on this way...it can't be done. Realize that we have expectations to uphold, an image to keep up if we are to survive in this place with what scraps of propriety we have left. Seeing as how image is the only thing that accounts to these scoundrels, it is our greatest duty. Oh! if it weren't for you...for your career, we would be away from Paris without a moment's notice. We could be as flightily as we would like; ah, Normandy never seemed so close! But the offer has changed things, you see, and we must face these things sometime. That sometime must be soon, Christine. This pushing and pulling you have set me through must end or I swear to you it will be the death of me. I know how difficult it has been for you to find peace, but if you truly _have_ found it and aren't deceiving me the way I trust you haven't, you must be ready to give me your final decision. I don't mean to sound so demanding and so terribly blunt all at once, but for the sake of all that is righteous about the two of us... I must _**know**_," said he, looking as if he would burst into a sob even more easily than she.

It was then that Christine realized that there was no longer a way of evading the truth: the sand in the hourglass had run out. Up against the wall at long last, she would have to give him an answer somehow and soon...she would, in all literality, have to grow up in the blink of an eye if she was not to lose him and all that they had built up. Without mercy, he would finally draw the line that she had feared since the beginning. That line would ultimately determine her resiliency, her loyalty, her honor and her ability to turn and conquer the thrill that pursued her. Christine knew the threshold she faced not to be an enemy, but if she crossed it would the fervent pain and nightmares desist or would she find herself in an entirely new dream, more frightening and surreal than anything she had experienced before—one she could never escape from?

If she gave a decision, the decision would be final, and in that defining moment she could never have been less sure. Every inch of him pled for an answer she could not yet give.

Christine searched for the words, for any excuse she may have been able to use, but found nothing but despair.

"I...I-I can't s-" she choked, almost giving way to the instinct to flee. The weight of the world loomed over her already-burdened shoulders and she did not know how long she would be able to withstand it. All threatened to collapse at any given moment.

Suddenly, footsteps were heard and a lilting voice, devoid of the edginess the couple swam in, echoed out from the adjoining hallway.

"Is everything fine, loves?"

They both turned pale in unison, leaping up from their seats to stand beside the table in a strange, startled impulse. The moment's thickness immediately lifted, but all was not forgotten. It was imperative—and the couple understood this together at once—that they not create any more turmoil about themselves that others could distinguish. Enough rumors surrounded them as it was. Keeping the matter hushed would relieve a world of tension. To mask the furious intensity that still conveyed between them both, Christine took up her cup of tea and both turned quickly to face the outer wall of windows. She tucked herself into the crook of his arm, shooting Raoul a final harried glance before Mrs. Boston entered to find them.

They glanced around at her as if to be disturbed from some tender reflection. The old madame seemed embarrassed enough to relinquish any suspicions she may have been keeping up.

"Do excuse me monsieur...Christine," she twittered, bowing lightly to one and then the other.

Raoul gave a harsh cough to up clear the unease that remained fresh within him, then answered back, "Nothing to excuse, Nanette. Come and sit a while, won't you."

Christine bristled at this momentarily but was relieved on the whole to have Mrs. Boston there to divert the subject. This was exactly and most conveniently what she did.

She shook her head endearingly, "Thank you kindly, monsieur, but I'm afraid I've business elsewhere. I was only curious as to when Miss Daaé would like me to arrange the cab home."

Christine at last found a lovely moment to reach down at the foot of the table and retrieved her precious lion. In one inconspicuous scoop the brass figurine returned to its welcoming home in her right hand; instant gratification found her. An idea then emerged from some fatally flawed crevice in the young woman's formerly demure thoughts. It was not a particularly visceral one, and one may even venture to say that it was not a very moral one either. In fact, it was exactly what she needed. The lion was a blessing of terrible inspiration.

"Actually, I would much rather like to stay here for the night. Should Liam need me, it would do well for me to be here so that he shan't disturb you, dear," Christine gave Raoul a swift nod to the side, pressing her forehead shamelessly into the front chest of his overcoat.

"Quite all right," he replied between sips of her drink of which she had offered coyly up to him.

Admittedly, Christine played up the sweet card rather well while under such momentous stress. Having so incredible of a bearing over her emotions was a skill she had picked up as time had calloused her over. Not even Raoul was sure she meant to be as enchanting as she was.

"Quite," said Nanette curtly, "I'll have my things brought from the apartment then..."

"The trouble won't be necessary, Mrs. Boston. I _insist_ that you take my quarters for yourself for the night," suggested Christine, wrapping both arms around her betrothed and leaning generously into his firm, unwavering side, as if to pretend the madame wasn't present. Raoul accommodated nicely; though it had surprised him at first he was mindful enough not to show it. Nothing could have been passed off as a more convincing display.

The wan old thing's eyes widened with disdain in the wake of their affections. Several things ran through her haggard mind that she regretted considering immediately. And so, in hopes that without meddling on her part the two of them would be drawn together, Mrs. Boston let the arrangement be. One night certainly would not jeopardize anything. Of this she assured herself and likewise, and just as silently, did Raoul.

The caretaker then called for the resident page to attend to the business of a new hired driver for her departure later on in the day. Christine insisted, before Nanette could implore the couple to settle back down to the table and never-mind her, that she would bring up Liam's fresh linens herself since the matter had not been serviced already. To follow up keenly, Raoul assured that such a thing was notably diligent of her and that he had paperwork of his own that required his attention anyway. They thanked her for her efforts, securing their gratitude with an endless bout of compliments. This overzealousness could have been the only means to raise any suspicion against them.

"Very well, children," Mrs. Boston gave a weary sigh, waving off the young lad who served her to depart at once. She would wait to escort the young lady—the very one who would rather wait hand and foot on a mangy urchin than settle back with her own impeccably handsome fiancé for the remainder of their unfinished brunch—to fetch the so desperately needed linens.

Christine broke away from Raoul with the same shy kiss granted him before their meeting. The same sincerity, though, was unmistakably absent. It seemed to be yet another display for good measure.

He would have been worried at this if she had not upon her departure met his ear closely, touching her flushed cheek to his own for a fleeting moment, and in the faintest of tiny whispers had vowed, "Tonight. Tonight you will _know_."

There were just enough grains in the hourglass to last until then.

* * *

_**TQ-** This is a re-edited chapter. That goes to say it does not have the mistakes that were present the first time it was published._

_A big thanks goes out to the handful of terrific writers who have nudged me along thus far- yes, I'm aware this is only the fifth chapter, but it's well deserved anyway._

_(Puts on beggar face picked up from scrap-happy Jack Russell Terrier professionals)_

_And now for more shameless review mooching: fact is, I need 'em like crazy. I know the drought is probably due to my laziness in updating, but this style of writing in particular is a bit trickier for me than the looser stuff I usually do. Even with piles of preliminary scraps to pull from I can still find myself torn about how to progress certain elements. Please do bear with this perfectionist as she attempts to localize her thoughts and do keep the reviews coming in. They're valuable tools for letting the writer know what's working, what isn't and how they can improve- if anything else they are indispensable encouragement and make yours truly very, VERY happeh'. So don't be stingy, s'il vous plait mes chéris...every little bit helps!_

_Onto the schmaltzier stuff be we now... a la Chapter the Sixth..._

**(Disclaimer: I do not own The Phantom of the Opera or it's characters- I've only been too lazy to mention it up 'till now.)**


	7. Pax: 6: Humaneity

**Book I: Pax**

_Chapter 6: Humaneity_

* * *

Humming softly to herself the lilting melody of some near-forgotten aria, Christine crept through the deserted halls by candlelight, each step following noiselessly after the other. Her tiny bare feet devoured the steps of the winding staircase with sure ease, taking each with the ball of her foot so as to float over them with the poise of a gazelle in midnight, seeking fatal waters. It was with this eerie sort of finesse that one escapes fear by fooling it, seeming tranquil and fleeting and light-footed as if you were only part of a pleasant hallucination and paid no mind to anything that may hinder your present happiness. Her soft vesper offerings to Music established this peace and quietly waged a war to infantilize the gory remnants of memory slithering about her mind. These were merely bothersome quirks within idol weakness such as sleep and daydreaming, when her mind would turn distant, fatal things over and over in the subconscious and scratch at her healing scabs until they bled. That was all they were. The less she became aware of the subliminal thoughts the more swollen her hidden afflictions became. It was when those emotional wounds would bleed out that her eyes would begin to dilate, her pulse would quicken, and she would feel strange brushes, caresses and indiscernible bumps against her body. This was the way the visions would physically manifest themselves and these sorts of sensations would occur only when she let down her guard, allowing her collective conscious to wander through stored up memories and dreams as if inside a great, terrible museum...as if they were trying to lead her back to something dangerous. When fully susceptible Christine was powerless over what went through her mind.

But for now she was safe within her own free will.

The dark that overcame the edges of the candlelight was entrancing. It was the kind of dark that untames the eyes to search further than illumination, to seek out for what one cannot see but can only feel the presence of, only because one is ingrained with the need to know what is before and around them. An average human being instinctively reaches out for what can be felt because this is a necessary sensory response for survival, being a species not well suited to sensing their surroundings in the dark. Christine's involuntary perception of this need to grasp only what can be sensed had become distorted somewhere along the line. Something within that her better judgment did not necessarily agree with felt for something more intangible than physical reassurance. Whenever they had the chance, her eyes would reach against her command to dark corners and corridors where the candlelight could not smother the inky blackness only because her mind was prone to wander there, not because she was trying to find her way. It was a simple thrill to her system, while logic feared anything and everything that may be concealed within those shrouds. This was the deadly complex. Christine fought what her senses wanted, which wasn't surprisingly new to her.

Jean-Matthieu, the resident page, M. Badeau, the hired cook, and Romina, the giddy little Spanish housekeeper, were the only other occupants of the flat that night besides she, Raoul and Liam. The two younger servants took to bed early each night in their separate quarters downstairs, though it was all too often that Romina would sneak out unnoticed, even during the winter months, to join the nightly scene along the degenerate Rue de la Huchette of the Quartier Latin and return home drenched in the unmistakable fragrance of rotgut liquor. But on this frigid night the jingle of the vivacious Spaniard's gaudy jewelry did not ring out from the first floor's hallway. When Christine halted the tune in her throat for a moment, she could almost distinguish the night breathing around her. One thing she was certain never to forget was exactly how to savor it.

Judging by the stillness at this late hour all were supposedly asleep. Christine had kept herself about downstairs only as long as it took the old chef to retire from his dog-eared copy of Napoleon's Maxims of War—which he took to religiously studying in the company of the personable Alphonse and a Choquin pipe each night, according to Raoul—by the light of the whale oil lamp in the kitchen. And so she had waited for the lamp to dim from her cozy place in the armchair of the front drawing room. For nearly an hour the dynamic lines of every trinket, painting and furniture piece of the room had been subject to her critical gaze at least ten times over. This helped to relinquish her own dreaded qualms and turned her thoughts to the ships and oceans that were depicted around her rather than what demanded her attention. It was funny to think of those nautical scenes and antiques as blissful escapes instead of pains. Not long before then she had suggested that a lovely floral piece would have served well as the airy space's focal point when the drawing room's empty wall was addressed. Somehow or another, though, they had come out of the print shop with an enormous, tawdry-looking canvas painting of a sea-bound fleet at dusk.

"If I see one more ship around this house, God so help me, Raoul, you will be hard pressed to see the likes of me here," she recalled her own nagging words and smiled just the way he had.

When she finally reached the peak of the staircase, Christine looked about to make certain she had not been followed but for no particular reason at all. A light still burned from Liam's room. The door had been left gaping, though Christine had advised both Mrs. Boston and Romina to keep it shut for fear of the draft aggravating their guest's ailments. Her lips tightened with frustration as she went to off the lights and close his door, convinced that she would have her say over the poor accommodation in the morning.

Upon reaching the door to the room, the young beauty halted in her step to listen intently to the frail muttering inside. Within moments, the mutter became slow and rhythmic. A tune was soon conceived in a sustained whistle that rose and fell like the gentle slopes of soft green peaks and valleys from the battered throat that birthed it.

Christine steadied herself against the wall, elegant fingers turning white as they clutched the frame of the door for dear life. Her pulse beat as if she were being stabbed over and over again in the throat, though she was able to compose herself, helpless to listen. All the while, the urchin lifted his voice and began to wrap his lilting little melody with words:

_An English lord came home one night,_

_Inquir-ring for his lady,_

_The servants said on every hand,_

_She's gone with the Gypsy Laddie._

_Go saddle up my milk-white steed,_

_Go saddle me up my brownie_

_And I will ride both night and day,_

_Til I overtake my bonnie._

_Oh, he rode East and he rode West,_

_And at last he found her,_

_She was lying on the green, green grass,_

_And the Gypsy's arms all around her._

_Oh, how can you leave your house and land?_

_How can you leave our money,_

_How can your leave your rich young lord,_

_To be a gypsy's bonnie._

_How can you leave your house and land,_

_How can you leave your baby,_

_How can you leave your rich young lord,_

_To be a gypsy's lady._

_Oh, come go home with me, my dear,_

_Come home and be my lover,_

_I'll furnish you with a room so neat,_

_With a silken bed and covers._

_I won't go home with you, kind sir,_

_Nor will I be your lover,_

_I care not for your rooms so neat,_

_Or your silken bed or your cover._

_It's I can leave my house and land,_

_And I can leave my baby,_

_I'm a-goin' to roam this world around_

_And be a gypsy's la-..._

The singing then ceased abruptly. The spell was broken. Once fully returned to her senses, Christine "awoke" to find her ear pressed painfully against the outer wall to feel the vibration of every haunting word that had floated through it. Then, as if by magnetism, she was drawn into the room without thinking. The candle had to be voluntarily forced to stay in her grasp as she stumbled inside and quickly picked up her catlike step of certain silence. Crackling from the fireplace was the only distinct sound that lifted in the lukewarm air, until Liam spoke.

"Bon'swar," his accent distorted with almost tangible warmth through a grin that flicked at the edges, faintly resembling the dance of the flames.

Christine snapped out of her state of anxiety as if someone had slammed a thick book together in her face. It couldn't be helped but to think him an irresistibly charming fellow, even when one's heart was pounding and head was spinning. Upon first noticing his possessing little features in the wavering radiance of the dimmed lights, she lost touch with the way that gentle, rollicking folk song had momentarily possessed her entire being—her very soul perhaps.

While any self-preserving young débutante of her newfound status would have scoffed at the very idea, she began to take curiously to the tiny lines that curled around this poor, beaten creature's smile and added sincere emotion to his forehead. Nothing about the lad was perfect, but everything about him was welcoming in its own funny way. Liam's face was round and somewhat squared off at the jaw like a child's with a plump dimpled chin despite his otherwise emaciated body. If close attention was paid to them, his eyes twinkled in whatever light available whenever he would speak, sea blue dancing with the shimmer that caught up in their rich, misty centers.

'What a darling husband he would make some shy little thing,' Christine thought gingerly to herself.

He seemed to keep up an odd sort of atmosphere about himself that was an extraordinary combination of pensive blithe. In every soul he encountered he could draw out the deepest of sympathy but at the same time the warmest of emotion. For these were the only two things Liam held within in his wind-worn heart: great pain and affection for anyone who would throw him even the faintest scrap of kindness.

Each time Christine met his gaze she felt as though she would break down into a crumbling sob at any moment, but in the same instant as though her heart would swell to bursting joy and begged to cry out with laughter. Sorrow could not overcome felicity, nor would elation overtake despair in this man's presence.

She nodded, swallowing down a massive knot in the back of her throat, "I hope you've been feeling a bit better Liam. You must excuse me, I've only come to turn off the lights. I don't mean to be a bother. Are you cold? Should I fetch another...?"

"Nay, Miss Daaé," Liam rested back, seeming content. "Everything is wonderful. Though I could use a spot of company."

It wasn't at all long before the fire roared in the hearth again after a vigorous stirring and that Christine lay in quite the unrefined posture on her stomach beside the chaise, ankles intertwined in the air behind her and chin resting raptly atop clasped hands. The ominous sensations brought about by his indelible strain of song settled to stagnation as she was drawn into a state of ignorant joviality just by being at his side.

"I couldn't even find the proper words to thank that kind gentleman of yours the way I would have liked. You'll let him know my gratitude, won't you?"

"Certainly," she sighed, wishing only to speak _her_ mind, thoroughly curious as to the tune he had been singing to himself and not interested in much else—rather, anything but. "I'll make a point of it...in the morning...when I see him...at breakfast."

She was not exactly sure what it was she was trying to make clear to him. As the fibers of the rug beneath her began to irritate her skin where she had once found it to be so soft and comfortable, Christine wriggled into a new position on her side. It would not be long before she would have to move again.

Liam sunk himself back deeper into his pillow on the plush armrest of the chaise, looking her squarely in the eyes.

"If I've caused any trouble between the two of you I'm dreadfully sorry. If I only had my legs, Christ knows I would be out of your hair in an instant," his eyebrows furrowed with subtle distress.

"Oh, please don't worry yourself over Raoul and I. We've enough of that sort of thing on daily terms. He is as happy to have you as I am; it's only that he's...had quite a bit on his mind lately. He'll come around to being a bit more amiable when things settle again."

It impressed her that Liam never once skirted down her sprawled out figure with those clouded blue eyes. Not even a single brash glance, which was more than could be said for the majority of Raoul's blue-blood playfellows who would so often make themselves a nuisance around her at gatherings. Everything about Liam seemed to justify him as an old, familiar acquaintance. A friend, perhaps, in which one could confide.

He gave a nod of assimilation. Christine sat up with knees bent and tidy, prim feet out in front of her. Turned to lean with her back against the side of the chaise, she sensed his hand move so as not to muss the flawless golden locks which spilled out behind her.

"The song you were singing, it was very pretty. Is it Irish?" Christine ruffled the carpet apprehensively with her bare toes. She was finally unable to withstand the curiosity that stung within. Her thoughts worked desperately to recall the lyrics that had so fervently taken hold of her.

He seemed a bit startled by her unexpected mention of his private solo and flinched in his resting place, almost as if embarrassed that she heard him and had been disturbed from something because of it, "I don't believe so. That old tune is Scottish if I recall."

"It wasn't in your family then, like the lion," she squeezed the piece of brass in a death grip with the hand that was hidden from him beneath the chaise, thinking perhaps that the song had a _connection_ to something as well. But this time, for some reason or another, she did not hope for any sort of connection.

"Ah, no. Picked it up from a handful of Londoners who'd fallen into bad fortune and ended up as cold and as homeless as I had. Formed a bit of a herd all together we did. For a while. Scrounging the streets within the protection of your brothers is a world less dangerous than surviving on your own. We looked after each other best we could, but goodness knows each man's trouble was his own. You see, there is no one to baby you out there, ma'amselle. They were always singing—the dear merry chaps they were—and I guess I just...picked it up. It was a kind of blanket, music was, that warmed us from the inside. My mother never sang to me as a child. It irritated Claude and I don't think she remembered many songs from her own childhood anyway. A mite sad, if I do say so. It's foolishness, I know, but I never felt I lived before the fellows taught me to raise my voice as we went along in the alleys. We'd sing of the shoals on the far coast, moors belly-full with grouse, lasses with hair the color of fire and spirits to match...things I'd never dreamed of. No doubt I wouldn't have made it through those six years of living in sludge and absolute ravaging poverty if I hadn't the old folk songs to console myself with. Gave me strength and still do."

"You love music," she said simplistically in an almost hushed awe, making quite certain he knew that she understood every inch of the emotion he was trying so hard to explain.

"Aye, s'pose I do. It was all I had for a while besides the clothes on my back. Even if I had only my voice to create them with there was something worth living for in those words. They kept me going, that's all. A man must always have motivation...sometimes he must have it in order to survive. God never leaves a soul with flat out nothing, darlin'. He gives us things in our despair that make us fulfilled even when there's nothing on your plate and nothing in your pocket. If you remember anything I've told you, remember that."

Liam closed his eyes and seemed to embrace a new level of peace, "But you're right. I do love music. Everyone's got to love something. Since I've never had a girl of my own...well, at least I've got the old ballads to keep me steady."

It hurt, hearing this poor lost soul finally confess his greatest sorrow, if only in his tone or vaguely in his words. Christine wanted more than anything to give him the solace he so rightfully deserved. The lion was becoming very hot in her hand. Suddenly she felt a pang of familiarity in the moment that chilled her to the bone, even in the great warmth that surrounded her. She blamed it on the draft. There was always something that anything could be blamed on or made an excuse for if one searched hard enough or was desperate enough, and if Christine could be described as anything, it was desperate.

She guided her gaze to the solemn floor, pink rose petal lips casting a reflective smile in the other direction, "There was a time, Liam, that all I had was music, too. I felt as though I could have lived and breathed it forever, just music alone...and then I found Raoul."

The way Christine's sweet, dripping voice fondled softly over her lover's name came close to bringing tears to Liam's eyes through the blackened bruises of their sockets. It was left only to his imagination what it would feel like to hear a woman utter his own name with such delicate, passionate ardor.

"You're in love with him," said Liam plainly through a fervent inhale. Christine watched him out of the corner of her eye.

Her expression became suddenly grim. "Yes, it would seem so. Though it isn't as if anyone else sees it that way. Being together but not _together_...people get the impression that I'm not as sincere as I make myself out to be. After an entire year... I don't want this for us anymore. But I do love him, I do."

The words from her mouth were jagged and disconnected and frayed around the edges. It was as if they were actually causing her physical pain to bear them out. She guided herself around them carefully, as one would favor a broken leg. The feeling of the warm bronze in her hand was the only thing that kept her from bursting into a blubbering mess right in front of Liam. Fresh logs jumbled about in the fireplace, sending out tiny glowing flakelets to rest on the stone of the hearth. They were as out of place as she was.

"And yet you are afraid to marry him..." Liam did not change his warm tone to match her subtle distress. His comforting voice was firm and steady even in her obvious despair, like a foundation of rock in a storm that kept her firmly grounded.

It was no coincidence that she was drawn to this man; he reminded her of someone. Her father.

"I am afraid...because it feels as though I'm committing a crime against humanity."

Christine cradled her forehead in one hand. She wasn't sure if she wanted to cry or laugh or kill herself. It sickened and bewildered her to such violent stirrings in so many directions through so many emotions all at once. It frustrated her to feel fine in the middle of a civil conversation one minute, only to have that peace and harmony torn away in a single sentence. Whatever it was she wanted, it was certain that she knew what she didn't want—to explain. Fate was merciful, though, that night. It bordered on slicing into her with its sharpened blade, but was somewhat merciful.

"Love is not a crime, my friend," said he, using his prophet's voice again...the voice that stuck within her as if its words were being carved into her flesh. "It is the blessing of humanity, not a crime against it."

Of course that was not at all what the girl had meant when she used the singular and curious word "humanity". Its two meanings, though conjoined within the same pattern of letters and syllabic sequence, were like day and night to her.

"On the contrary, Liam...love has almost nothing to do with humanity."

And then she paused, thought, breathed and uttered, "As a matter of reason, neither does humanity."

"I don't see," the young cripple cast her a puzzled glance.

Christine's voice suddenly became almost completely devoid of life as she spoke, "Hu-_maneity_ has nothing to do with humanity."

"Now where on earth did you get such a notion, ma'amselle Daaé? That is the kind of talk I have grown so used to around the back-alley fires, where strangers huddle close to strangers only because they are brothers in pain and in cold. You speak as though the world has wronged you," and then he gave a well-intended chuckle. It did not offend her. It only reminded her of how little he knew.

Christine folded herself in tightly, arms wrapped around her legs with her chin tucked between her knees like a punished child shamed in a corner.

"I have my reasons," she uttered.

"To hate humanity?" queried Liam, almost jokingly.

Christine tilted her head to meet his stare, "That's a smidgen too strong of phraseology, Monsieur Beaucathrine."

"Then enlighten me, chéri. What is this you have against the world?"

A dreadful stillness constricted around them both. Christine's lush blue eyes caught up in the same path as his. They pressed her on to speak but did not intimidate the way Raoul's did. With great reluctance, she found the words to give him an answer.

"I have seen things, Liam... most dreadful things that the world has wrought upon a soul," her voice wavered when she spoke as if she were struggling to keep her balance on a tightrope five-thousand leagues above ground. The anguished beauty hadn't the courage to say more for fear of falling. Her words shook the rope, her lifeline, violently each time she opened her mouth.

"As have I, Miss Daaé. Beatings. Maulings. Starvation. Rape. Infanticide. Cannibalism. Execution of the innocent. All at the hands of mankind. I've had the privilege myself of being thrown aside and spit upon by the dandy of a society that surrounds us. 'Humanity' practically condemned me to die in a bloody pile lodged in the gutters of the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. But by the grace of God, I opened my eyes and there you were, ma'amselle. I've seen things that haunt me still to this day, Christine, but my faith in humanity comes from what I see within kind souls like you and your Vicomte. Could very well have left me there on the street, not knowing what consequences there'd come with rescuing me. But even still, you redeemed this filthy wretch and allowed me into your home. It's by your hand that I'm even alive. For someone to have so much love in their heart for the less fortunate, to disregard the danger, the logic, the common sense and to instead see something worth saving in me. That, my friend, is the grace of mankind. Aye, people like you are few and far between. But there will _always_ be exceptions to humanity's cruelty—the world has a place, somewhere, for every soul."

He sounded so sure. So terribly sure. Almost convincing.

"P-probably so..." Christine felt her heart wrench up into her throat and the centers of her eyes contract to what seemed like mere specks. Being stabbed in the back, she thought, couldn't feel any worse. Shame threatened to strangle her; there would be no release and no relief from its grip once it caught a firm enough hold. It would lacerate until nothing was left.

She wanted to tell him how lucky he was. How saintly he was compared to _her_ of all people. That he was a beautiful human being with a soul ten times as splendid as what made up his outer appearance. Christine realized that Liam, as downtrodden as he was, could not even fathom his own good fortune. All of the horrors he had spoken of paled in comparison to the image she kept chained up in her mind. It was certain: one had to experience the absolute threshold of suffering to know what the absolute threshold of suffering was. She wanted to tell him that there was no grace, no salvation, no mercy for...some.

But she could not go on—she could not tell him even if she attempted to force herself. This man did not need her tears nor her angst nor her guts spilled out in a reeking pile before him. He needed sleep. He was sickly. So was she, but sleep would not come to her, for she was guilty—guilty as sin—and he was not.

More than eager to push back the memories along with the sobs that were thrashing like wild-eyed, hydrophobic beasts to be let out, Christine left him there upon tender insistence to take the rest his broken body needed, slipping the lion back into her dress before she rose up on trembling legs. In fact, every inch of her was in a perpetual, disquieted shudder, but Christine succeeded in masking the full extent of her internal agony until out of his sight. At least Liam could be at ease, unaware that he had shaken her entire existence to its very foundation. He wrapped himself snugly into the woolen blanket she had lain over him earlier and gave a long sigh of contented rapture as the warmth settled over him. Watching the grateful fellow turn to face the back of the chaise, she extinguished the gas lights with a rasping, dry whisper of a "goodnight".

No one was there to settle her own restless soul into a nightmare-less sleep. She was completely, inescapably alone.

In careful haste, Christine backed out of the doorway, eyes still fastened to the vague silhouette within the room's swallowing darkness, her shallow breath picking up fervor and anxiety by the millisecond. But in the place of the empty hallway she was expecting to meet, her back end ran squarely into another figure which let out a gasp of utter shock as blinded body rammed into blinded body.

Submerged in the inky blackness, both struggled to get a grip on each other. Her frightened shivering subdued just a bit when she sensed the sound of his voice before her.

"Christine!" Raoul wheezed from a soundly bruised diaphragm, as loud as could be classified as a whisper.

Before he had the chance to fight it or even to think, Raoul felt a pair of hands clutch the slackened collar of his nightshirt and thrust him into the nearest wall with a loud, emphatic thud. The impact knocked the very breath out of his lungs. Christine's steady hand cupped rapidly over his mouth, willing him not to speak, which he had to force off in order to.

"What the hell were you doing in there?!" he came close to shouting. By this point he had found the very brink of tolerance.

"Shh, don't speak," she urged breathily, keeping him locked firm against the wall. "Your room. Now."

Within moments they had dragged themselves in rigid tension, one grappling for a firm hold on the other in the pitch darkness, all the way down to the end of the upstairs corridor with only the wall to guide them. Christine's grip on him did not let up. He still could not speak beneath her hand. Raoul decided it best to play along for the time being.

One of the doors along the hall gave way at last. Raoul and Christine were thrown back into the room, stumbling to stay upright. The moonlight that cast in from the expansive bedroom's windows made their surroundings somewhat visible. Raoul was released from the exigent woman's grip only in time for her to whip around and shut the door quietly, nervously behind them. She then took up with him again, guiding him backwards with short, awkward steps until she felt him press against something. Every ounce of her remaining strength went into shoving him down onto the edge of the empty bed against his weakened will. Once he was sitting, dumbstruck, before her, Christine nearly fell apart. Her head spun and her pulse raced and she had no idea what she was doing anymore.

Raoul moved up from where he sat, still thoroughly confused and now determined to have more answers than the one he originally sought alone.

"Be still!" she demanded, forcing him back down onto the already disheveled mattress.

"Have you lost your mind?! I'm getting the light," his tired voice was already furious but slowed to make sure she understood, "Then you're going to tell me..._what_...is going on."

Christine's ragged breath passed over the layer of beaded sweat that had formed across the base of his neck and the exposed upper part of his chest. A shiver carried through both of them, awaking every physical sense along its path. All became still in the blink of an eye. The struggle was over.

"Leave them off. I don't think we'll need them..." Christine whispered, exhaustedly lowering herself into his lap and resting her forehead against his slick, heaving collarbone. Meanwhile her hands worked their way around his waist to his back, trembling as the cold sweat from the sleep-barren night he had been enduring seeped through the white fabric to the flesh of her palms and tips of her fingers.

"You'll tell me, then," Raoul suddenly took her by the shoulders and shook her, eye to eye... gently, pleadingly. "You'll tell me that you're ready to be married, ready to set a day for the wedding—to become _my_ wife."

Christine just knew he was holding his breath...that he would not allow himself to take another until he was given something in return that would console his need for certainty. He would rather die than go another minute without it.

Still, she did not give him a final decision—she couldn't and didn't intend to in the first place. But Raoul would take what he did receive without resistance.

* * *

_**TQ-** This is a re-edited chapter. That goes to say it does not have the mistakes that were present the first time it was published._

_"The Gypsy Laddie" is a lovely little folk ballad, originally by John Renfro Davis(supposedly). If you're curious as to the tune it can be found here: (www.)contemplator(. com)/child/gypsylad.html_

_Salutes for the continued support. Remember: I /FLIP\\ for reviews...nothing brightens my day quite like 'em!_

_...Except maybe cookies... or Will Smith movies. Nyah, reviews are better 8D_

**(Disclaimer: I do not own The Phantom of the Opera or it's characters)**


	8. Pax: 7: Overturned

_**Authoress Notes:**_ Welcome to our seventh installment of L.S. I apologize for all the republishing that has been going on over the last couple of chapters. Our usual order has been restored in production-editing relations and so the updating process won't be such a hassle.

If you're a regular to this particular work, please take a moment to view my latest LiveJournal entry(the link is in my profile). Most of the characters in L.S. are based on real life people. The entry includes a guide with pics that I used for character design reference to flesh out the story. From Christine to Nadir, the majority of the designs were inspired by "celebrities"- it's helped me to visualize the story a bit better and may do the same in your direction.

In the meantime, please observe the shiny, shiny 'Submit Review' button towards the bottom of your screen. As much as I hate to beg, it's been sorely neglected lately. Your input keeps this thing afloat. So give it a go if you read, I'll love you forever and ever... and ever.

**(Disclaimer: I do not own The Phantom of the Opera or it's characters. All original characters are mine.)  
**

* * *

**Book I: Pax**

_Chapter 7: Overturned_

* * *

Christine giggled through their lips' embrace which broke for her to speak, "Where on earth did you learn to kiss that way?"

"From you," Raoul whispered deeply, drawing her in closer, coveting each sweet vibration of breath through her body that resonated against his.

Fresh morning light had already begun to bathe the world around them. It reached into the bed where their forms lay enveloped in cashmere linens and night that still lingered there to sweep away the stale darkness, unnoticed, like a subtle maid. Neither had any idea what hour it was, nor any concept of how long they had been together that night—each had only the other. Their voices remained sustainedly low and drenched in lascivious desire.

"Mmmhmm, now I remember. The meadow," she sighed in the way of a soft-spoken child, having entangled herself thoroughly in the sheets which wrapped them together, for the chill had grown bitter during the night.

"Behind my Aunt's laundry house. You were twelve, I was thirteen... and stuttering like an idiot."

Raoul's daylight had dawned hours before the sun had risen. Every inch of him was content, utterly fraughtless, within this standstill of time. There was nothing that mattered but what his physical senses would decipher.

"You took me by both hands," said he, concreting his wistful words by taking up her palms within his steady grasp, "And knelt us down into the ryegrass and said..."

"'Show me you won't forget me'," Christine finished, mimicking her own girlish tone of so many years ago. Her smile, so close and so intimate—his alone for what seemed the first time—implored his heart to leap wildly against all restraint. Warmth emanated from the wrinkled silk of her gown, made so by their rollicking, and seemed to melt into his being, a smooth and lustrous second skin that only they would share.

Raoul could remember with his every sense as if that fateful goodbye had played over and over in his mind for years. It had.

"'But how Christine? How can I show you what I can only tell you?...I'll...I'll think of you every day and every night and every hour that we're apart...'"

His speech faltered perfectly, but he could not suppress the joy of anticipation. Through those most dire words shone a happiness that surely could never be rivaled by anything on earth.

She placed a solitary finger over his lips and breathed, "'I want you to s_how me... _and then I will never forget.'"

Trying his hardest to recreate the nervous, shaking of hands of the lovestruck young boy he had once been in her eyes, the tips of his fingers came to follow the creases of her neck, reaching the base of her shapely jaw line in time. Satin flesh quivered from the inside out at his touch but she made not a sound, not a move otherwise and was able to keep herself serenely composed. Christine's eyes remained fastened firmly to his until she was swept away again in the gentle pressure of his kiss.

It was entirely too easy to lose herself to the raw feel of his hands and legs and tongue working their wonders all at the same moment—especially as he grew increasingly generous. On normal terms she would not have minded this sort of extravagance, but Christine was determined not to give him anymore rein than he had already received that night. Her restraint had become impressive, almost unnatural. But then again, she thought, was anything about her natural anymore?

"That's funny. I don't remember it being quite so zealous," she pushed away coyly.

It took Raoul a moment to return to his senses. As if unable to survive any other way, he nuzzled his face into her cheek, afraid to leave an inch of her untouched.

"That _is_ rather funny. Somehow _**I**_ remember you having on quite a few more clothes," his voice delved so smoothly—so sinfully close—into her ear that Christine was certain it halted the blood in her veins.

The taste of her still lingered with him, sweetened by hope and relief and all other mannerisms of his somehow poignant love. What lay there before his eyes was his world; those quipping words burst at the seems with sentimentality. The night behind them had been a pennicle higher than he anything he had ever experienced—Christine, on the other hand, saw it merely as a delightful neccessity. _Delightful_ in the darkest, most lush, hedonistic sense of the word. It was a duty to herself—feeling only a fraction of unanimalistic emotion that he did—that, though admittedly selfish, she was certain would deliver them both from a considerable amount of heartache later on.

"You have a reliable memory, monsieur," Christine wriggled out of his grasp to sit up against the headboard, but to satiate his shameless need began running her fingers through the lush blonde wisps of his hair. He clung to her lower half, unwilling to let her slip away so easily.

Involuntarily she was mocking him, but with another, now welcome, internal singeing from the lion through her breast she felt rather smug about deceiving him. The longer he could be kept "occupied" the more time she would be allotted to conceive a new plan of evasive action. In the meanwhile, Raoul was most blissfully oblivious to the bait he was taking.

As defective as her strategy may have been, it did not amount to abrupt cruelty. She didn't feel guilty in the least for giving him exactly what he wanted...though it wasn't _exactly_ what he wanted to begin with. He was too decent a man for that sort of reason. It was still insincere deceit no matter how far she let him go. It was still substituting an answer with somatic pleasure. She was convinced she loved him still and yet there was no remorse; she would continue to tease him until that course of action failed to buy her time...or until it ceased to work...until she would face his pleading eyes and urging words again. The very thought was frightening to face.

And so went the day to day paradox that was the romance of the Vicomte and his so-called Christine Daaé, one being of pure intention while the other gave the illusion of such.

"Oh, my God, my God, Christine," Raoul murmured in perpetual rapture as she allowed him to take her up again, swallowing the whole of her in his fondling embrace. This woman had ingrained herself within him to become a primal need. Of one thing he was certain: nothing would come between them now. He would tear down any barrier, fight any adversary, swim any ocean that kept her from him. Possessive fire stirred in his blood. _Nothing_ would prevail against him.

There then sounded a sudden clamor of footsteps from the hall outside. A voice soon arose, its high-pitched shouts pounding against the walls like fists of sound. The voice was urgent; the voice was anxious. The voice was little Romina's.

Her words were indiscernible.

Raoul and Christine shot up from where they had been so passionately nestled and bolted for the door. Still wrapped in the bed's sheets, Christine dragged them off with her in one fear stricken effort. When she imagined the worst there was no time do much else but to act upon impulse. Her first and only frantic thought turned to Liam—she hastily blamed herself for leaving him alone while he had been so sickly. If something had happened to him during the night the weight, she knew, would be upon her shoulders...those being shoulders which could not afford to hold anymore.

Raoul's worry was identical. Suddenly jolted back into a tangible world from the depths of luxurious delusion, he willed the urchin to have held on during the night. He regretted his spiteful cursing of the man the morning before—it was not his place to think wrongly of a soul who had not wronged him intentionally. To find an impaled body on the doorstep and the rest of the house ransacked would be an unfathomable blessing compared to the waif passing. Within the heartbeat of an instant, Raoul saw all hope of a stable, prosperous near-future incinerated before his eyes in the solitary form of a death-ravaged gamin at peace on his best silk chaise. His beloved's sobs already wrenched through his mind. The world that had been before him seemed to crumble apart at the turn of a knob.

The Vicomte nearly tore the bedroom door from its hinges. On the other side panted the tiny Spaniard, swaddled within the confines of her maroon robe. She had been knocking against the door furiously since she had reached it. The knocking stopped when Raoul and Christine appeared before her, their eyes wide with terror in anticipation for her to speak. Christine leaned against her harried lover for support; he readied himself for the worst.

"Monseñor de Chagny!" Romina cried, biting her lip and voice losing urgency as the realization settled, "Christine, she is not...in... her room."

The situation they stood to face allotted not a spare moment to be grateful, misinterpreting her expression of startled relief with one of embarrassment. The couple stumbled to explain themselves but not a legible word fell from their mouths. Both turned bright red while the doe-eyed servant only stood patiently in wait for a chance apologize for her outburst. Christine struggled to free herself from the sheets that hung ridiculously from her frame and cursed at them under her breath when they refused to release her ankle.

"Oh," Romina tapped the air nervously with one hand which then came down to rest on her upper lip, "I see she is with you."

Raoul cleared his throat with a bellowing force.

"Yes, Romina, we were _discussing_ Liam's appointment today. Did you see to our guest this morning as you were told?" he inquired firmly, still shaken with trepidation.

"Sí."

"He was still asleep?"

"Sí."

"Then there is no emergency?" urged Christine, rubbing her arms and covering her moderately exposed chest all at once.

"I was not sure where you were, señorita. I apologize again if I've disturbed you."

Raoul was quick to ease away from the subject, "Thank you for your concern, Romina. But if you will, give M. Beaucathrine our regards. Tell him that Docteur D'Brouilliard will be here to examine him after breakfast. I had Mrs. Boston arrange it on her way home yesterday, it was no trouble at all. We will see him as soon as Geoffroi arrives but not a moment before. I don't want him stirring about in his condition. Just...wake him briefly to let him know if he will allow it."

"I will, monseñor," Romina curtsied, parting from them with an impertinent spring in her step that somehow infuriated Christine.

'Why is it everyone's business where I choose to be?' spat the vicious thoughts which returned to sully the diva's suddenly cleared conscious. Liam was only sleeping, he would live. The sudden rush of worry followed by the decline of relief left her feeling bitter.

"She didn't even...question it," Raoul whimpered. He was still violently overwhelmed and had to be torn away from the door in his state of shock.

Christine addressed the matter crossly, slamming the door behind them once Romina was out of sight, "Well that certainly says a great deal about you and I, now doesn't it? If your own maid finds it perfectly usual for us to be locked up in a room together, half dressed in the early hours of the morning then I shudder to consider what other people think."

"Bother what other people think! They've already lodged us between a damned rock and a hard place. No matter what we do there will always be something improper about us, so why not enjoy ourselves?" he groaned, dragging himself back onto his mattress. Stiff pain had returned to him through the instant jarring of stress. It was only made worse being that it came upon him after enduring such a massive release of tension. He felt then as if he had jumped straight over a cliff—having tasted the exhilaration of falling immediately before hitting the ground face first.

"You sound ready enough to throw out every remaining scrap of propriety still left in our possession," she mused, rolling up the discarded linens that had so lavishly dressed her earlier about her arm, "As if it wasn't enough to have me sleep in the same house without a proper guardian."

She turned up her nose and sneered in condescending mockery of the social statutes that constricted them. Just as Raoul was sure there was nothing that could come between their happiness, she was surely content to break the barriers of modesty for her own purpose, whether noble or not.

And so began, too, the metamorphosis of Christine Daaé from a demure, obedient ingénue into a woman of sharpened mind and hardened heart. Unbeknownst to her, these were the attributes out of which fateful destiny was molding her armor—weapons she would eventually brandish in order to survive.

The bronze lion rewarded her spite.

The instant Christine set the balled up sheets on the bed beside him, Raoul seized her by the waist and pulled her down in a giggling heap on top of him. It was becoming apparent that he was developing an uncanny skill at catching her before she had time to resist.

For a glorious while she yielded, letting her fiancé's touch glide over every sacred place with such bold finesse that it was nearly beyond all controllable impulse to let him go. But when she searched herself for the motivation to repay him the favor nothing drew up. Legitimate desire began to evaporate until only a small reserve of physical lust remained untouched. Her thoughts twisted over to Liam. He still slept in the thick of holy silence only a few doors away while she was so greedily relishing the sensation of Raoul's leg riding up between her thighs, the beloved knowledge that she was slithering out of a commitment to the man yet again making it all the more gratifying.

It was never meant to be the way it had become. And yet knowing that Liam was safe and that her fate remained unsealed gave Christine overpowering confidence in herself. Confidence begot strength to pull away from his affections, leaving him aching throughout.

"Enough, Raoul. It's late..." the words tore out edgily as she recovered from his lips' reluctant departure from the base of her neck. With great difficulty, Christine slid down and rose to her feet, not exactly eager to part from his affections. She was still acquiring the feel for push-and-pull as a useful tool of manipulation, for underneath it all she was an innocent girl—one pressed to drastic measures by her own insecurity.

The icy touch of dread not present any longer, Christine found the bare floor much more forgiving this time around. She took to wandering the room with her hands knotted together behind her back, sweetly gracing the surrounding atmosphere with a phrase or two of song, nearly too quiet to hear at all. With placid blue eyes that seemed to cast a crystal glow over everything that came into her sight, she drenched the luxurious bedroom in the light of her gaze as she wandered. A moan released from the gentleman still sprawled out on the bed behind her. Having found the place where for those five-or-so beautiful hours she had rested beside him, Raoul was content to inhale the linens to his heart's delight. Christine could only shake her head in pity, wondering whether all men were so hopelessly clingy.

'What on earth would Mrs. Boston say?' she thought in notice of her obvious dishevelment reflected in the room's only mirror. It reminded her of something.

"I suppose I shall have to make arrangements to return home sometime today," said Christine quite loudly over her shoulder, "Though it's a pity that I should have to leave my dear little waif..."

Raoul emerged from the tresses of the bed to face her coquettish pout. It was more than he could stand; just the essence of being near her was beginning to drive him mad.

"Nonsense," he boasted, not giving his words a second thought, "You'll stay right where you are. If you wish to remain where Liam is easily accessible, then so it shall be. I think it only right that his lovely savior should be within range, feeling as poorly as the chap does. Certainly I cannot give him the same sort of comfort he has found with you."

A light beamed from her countenance that captured him entirely.

"Then you'll let me stay here?" she practically danced to his side.

"For as long as you see fit," he promised, forgetting all else but the feel of silk and lace over naked flesh filling his grasp. When she took him by the hand in the midst of her excitement, it only escalated his euphoric disorientation.

"But what of my lessons?"

"You will have them here...you will _live_ here if it suits you so."

She kissed him readily, rewarding his compulsive, reasonless reasoning the way the bronze lion reinforced her newly-acquired, uncharacteristically brash nature. He was right where she wanted him and had a stirring feeling that she would not be sleeping alone again for quite a while.

"Liam will adore you, you know," she chortled, brushing the hair from his face, "It's in his eyes...in his voice. He's been so lonely throughout his life—compassion is new to him. He wanted me to be with him, just to have someone to listen to what he had to say. That was all he needed in the world, Raoul. I've been looking for the chance to do something right for someone else... you know I have. Perhaps you are giving me that chance."

Raoul could not have felt more important, more needed, more loved than if someone had handed him the key to the universe. He sighed and sunk back into the plush warmth of his pillow. Escape had found its way through his very existence.

"I can give you the chance to do whatever you desire—to do, to have, to simply experience. I care for Liam because I care for you; I am giving you the means to become what you have always wanted to become because I care for you. I've pushed aside doubt and worry to let you do these things _because I love you_. It was never my intention to allow us to stay here in Paris, much less to have you back on stage. And now I find myself having to force you into lessons—the same lessons you plead to have because you could not bear to be without your music. I suppose I do these things against my own better judgment for your happiness as well, even when you don't agree with it. Foolishness really," he breathed, lightheaded and stricken blind with emotion.

"You say we stayed in Paris only because you love me," said the dainty blonde, leaving his bedside to walk the split along the middle of the hardwood floor in a thoughtless daze, "I say that we stayed because we don't belong anywhere else."

"And why is that? You could not be content with Normandy the way we had planned?"

The Vicomte's mind skipped about like a stone cast across glassy waters. His thoughts did not connect with each other the way they could have if only she had not cast her radiant spell upon him. There was only love, longing and her best interest floating freely in his mind...a most fortunate combination for Christine.

"It is because I refuse to cower from the past anymore—and neither do you," she nodded to him boldly. "It wouldn't be fitting to turn tail and run when so much is lying at our feet here."

It was hard to accept the fact that she had never even dared to consider saying anything of the sort, but ever since the bronze lion had first touched her flesh there had been an ungodly urge within her to express boldness, sureness, dauntlessness of any kind, at any cost.

His smile cast over the playfulness in his words, "I don't believe it. I don't believe either of us are that strong."

"I believe," her voice peaked, their gazes meeting again when she turned liquidly on her heels to face him. "You are strong because it is your nature to be so..."

Effervescent footsteps carried her back over the path she had taken across the room. They returned her to his side, capturing his senses with every merciless step. Within moments their faces were only inches apart. One breath belonged to both; one breath and every word.

The words, in fact, seemed to spill delicately from her mouth, as if there were something other than herself bearing them out through her. But still, she bore them out in such a way that would seduce the soul to be at peace with itself.

"I am strong because you are strong. That is how we will survive here. We will be better than we think we are...than what everyone else thinks we are, because we will take our resilience from one another. Not from ourselves alone. You will see."

And so, with about as much warning it had come on, their liaison fled along with the shadows of the room's quiet corners. The striking beauty reclaimed her lilac dressing gown from where it had been strewn across the floor and made her extravagant exit once decently clad, slipping out of the room... out of his grasp. Raoul was left to face the aftermath in solitude.

There was the click of the door, silence and then a wall. A wall of realization. He would slam into this monstrous structure of rationality at full force. The lust, the pleasure, the tender, enveloping warmth, even her soothing final reassurance...it all meant nothing now. _His question remained unanswered._

The hourglass had been overturned once again.

* * *

Monsieur le docteur Geoffroi Moreau D'Brouilliard abhorred the thrill of Friday morning visits. Friday seemed to always be the favored day of the week for fatalities and so aptly, he braced himself from the moment he awoke to rise and face those mornings with a callous dread. Years of experience were no bane of soreness when it came to taking on the tragedy in store.

It was to be assumed that this dawn would be no different than any other. Even before daylight broke over the city's skyline, his medicinal bag was being loaded down with the day's necessities, before long quite plump and becoming a hassle for the aging man to lift (though he had always insisted that as long as he was in good enough shape to competently remove someone's gallbladder, then he was in good enough shape to carry his own bag). Food would not grace him until later that morning. It was the curse of the field that breakfast was never high ranking on the list of early to-do's.

The stocky ward Armand greeted him with the usual verve at the front door out on the way to their duties. Faced with those youthful eyes winking and blinking, Geoffroi only growled in reply. Pussyfooting with salutations was all well and good when one had no business with gangrene wounds, lithotomies, and all other matter of blood and bile penciled into their schedule.

"Will you be needing the enema today, docteur?" the boy queried, holding out the equipment's wooden case.

It was apparent that his master was not willing to bother with words on that brisk, listless morning. Dr. D'Brouilliard shook his head and continued out the door without a solitary utterance. It was usual for their greetings to be quite blunt in the early hours. The boy had grown accustomed to translating various slurs and quirks of voice since the renowned surgeon had hired him out as an assistant. Though most exalted for his work, developments, contributions and status, the good doctor was never the most sociable of men.

On the curb before his doorstep waited an exquisitely embellished red and black coupé, prepared to wheel him along his route which followed the Rue de Vaugirard's path through Luxembourg and then beyond. It was his chariot of war, but out of all of the wars in history the one he waged seemed the most trivial. His father before him had given his life in the gullet of the Revolution of 1830. It seemed to the aging doctor that as more and more time went by, his daily excursions accounted to less and less, no matter how many lives were spared by his hand. A life was but a life and life on the whole was implausible. His role in the prevention of nature's taking its course was rather uninspiring once the idea came about full circle. Nevertheless, there could be no delay in his services, no matter how insignificant.

That crisp winter morning yielded two phlebotomies, a new case of tuberculosis, a child who needed a thumb sewn back in place and the ever-exhilarating splinting of a leg. 'Perhaps', he considered, 'this Friday will be merciful'. There had been no deaths. The doctor yawned his way through the usual paces, referring to his pocket watch every minute or so for the most imperative of information.

When 6:30 reared its ugly head—the precise time of day when his craving for a strong coffee became most ravenous—D'Brouilliard stole off for his next appointment with breakneck urgency. L'alouette Errante, his favored morning eatery, could not afford to miss him.

Once he and his charge were seated inside and out of the bitter cold, he insisted upon not being disturbed while eating. Cinnamon café au lait and fresh nut bread should be savored with a sour grimace in peace. This was a custom that Armand usually respected, but on this lackluster morning took the chance to break.

"What'll be our next stop?" the eager ward asked, oozing unwanted enthusiasm all over the place. "I'll bet you twenty-five francs old Martinière's gout has gotten worse over the night. That's it isn't it?"

D'Brouilliard's icy scowl rose over the paper in his hand to bore through the lad with intense indignation. Armand gave only an innocent blink. Intimidation had no affect on such a callow mind; he was forced to reply.

"Save your bets, boy," the good doctor flicked the _La Lune _sternly from the wrist at his wide-eyed apprentice, "It is a new case, a retired ballet mistress."

"Name of?"

"Ehr...Giry. A Mame Giry, if I am not mistaken. Her apartment is near the markets along Rue de Buci." He gestured somewhat northeasternly.

"Not far then, but I've never heard of her."

"I didn't expect as much," said D'Brouilliard in a rather condescending tone. "When her daughter came into my office last evening to see to it that I could drop in today, I must say I wasn't sure whether the child was well herself. Nothing she told me of her mother's illness seemed to...add up, per se. I could hardly get any firm information from her. Bad nerves may have had something to do with the peculiar description she gave me of the symptoms. The poor dear did look shaken, that much is certain. But _**I**_ would bet myself that it's only a virus, just from what little I could make out."

He shrugged limply, setting down the paper to return the steaming cup on the table to his wind-chafed lips. Indeed a smug individual, he kept an aura of calm arrogance about his person at all times. It reflected in the way he sat, proud yet aloofly subtle, the way he talked, intelligent but always stark, the way he dressed, always in the most grandeur of fashion his station would permit, and in the way he generally presented himself in public. Behind closed doors, though, he was a gentle, plaintive man, one who was prone to strut like a peacock before others only because it gave an impression that he had all the answers. This sort of nature was de rigueur for any doctor who had the grit to become as successful as he. There weren't all that many of those in number.

"That's to say it will be a short engagement, oui?" the young man rubbed his hands together, partly from the chill, partly in earnest. "Y-you did say we were going to Monsieur le Vicomte's flat afterward...didn't you?"

His master raised a dubious eyebrow, "Yes, as a matter of fact we are. He has a guest in his home whom he wanted me to have a look at. Something about the lungs..."

D'Brouilliard's words dropped down into an indistinguishable pit of mutter before rising to the surface again, "What is it to you?"

"Perhaps Mme. Daaé will be there," Armand's voice sunk impressively low. It was practice.

"In that case, I shall consider leaving you outside whilst I examine de Chagny's guest," the surgeon cast a simmering leer in the boy's direction.

The tiny silver spoon which he held in his hand plinked lightly against his cup and the world bustled about them and all was right with in way of the order of things. Geoffroi was stoic and pleased with himself as the smooth dark liquid settled within him, warming his confidence along with the blood in his aging veins.

It was upon leave of the quaint corner café for the home of his newest convalescent that, after thirty-nine years of service to Paris's Left Bank, Geoffroi D'Brouilliard would finally come face to face with something he could not fully explain.


	9. Pax: 8: La Danse Macabre

_**Book I: Pax**_

_Chapter 8: La Danse Macabre_

* * *

Books had a tendency of slipping out of Christine's grasp when she most needed them for escape. This was caused most frequently by lack of interest or time, but on that bitter cold morning found a more literal manifestation. When the aging spine of her present read hit the floor, half of its pages came out of their binding to scatter across the room.

She muttered something spiteful then climbed out of the plush confines of the front parlor chair to retrieve them. Stained a musky brown from the years of wear and tear, they had given way easily. As she knelt to gather up the strays that had fallen, Christine noticed the title page that rested beneath the chair. It had lodged itself under one of the curved cherry wood paws that made for all of the furniture's feet. The title had never concerned her, the book itself chosen at random from the amply stocked shelf. _The Subtle of Pembroke_. It was a romance, and not quite as subtle as forewarned.

Christine thought it odd that Raoul would even have such a book. It hadn't been long, though, before all else was forgotten but the story in her hands. Swept up in the passionate tale of a young woman suffering the loss of a mother, subject to the advances of an aggressive suitor with whom she was brought up and to her father's morbid depression, Christine was taken aback at first by its rather carnal beginning, not particularly accustomed to such vivid description, but took to peeking over the top of the pages like a child once curiosity settled in. The bronze lion remained, like a gentle, breathless pet, nestled in her lap. Every other moment she would pick it up to run it through her hands, almost erotically.

When the book fell, so went her concentration. Worn pages collected in the crook of her arm as she darted here and there after them. But the second time she searched beneath the large centerpiece armchair she paused when her fingertips found something oddly course amidst the immense layers of lint and grime. It was the spine of another book.

Christine pulled it out from its hiding place and immediately dusted off its cover. By the look of it, the filthy old thing had been lodged beneath the chair for quite a while.

"_Yersinia Pestis: the Origins of the Black Death_," she read softly to herself, tracing the embossed letters across the deep green hardcover. "Why on earth would...?"

The question faded away into the dank, dripping confines of the back of her mind.

Without hesitation, Christine set her fervent romance face down on a nearby stand and dove without caution into a much grimmer treatise.

The opening page yielded a black and white reproduction of a most perturbing work of art—an allegory labeled at the very bottom of the page to have originated in the 1400s. Portrayed there were skeletons of many shapes and forms. They were dancing, jowls hanging down in ruthless laughter, eye sockets cold and void of anything but vile menace. Christine recognized the work immediately. It was a caricature Death itself. Death, in the sense that it is the equalizer of all men, was shown taking shape in people from diverse walks of life. It is the final dance and the delight of all things in opposition to man—things that seek to destroy the human spirit.

For a moment, she studied its artistic detail. Completely unaware at first of how suddenly the image had spoken to her in a visual language she seemed not yet to comprehend fully, Christine took her time in turning the page. The picture's grip on her attention soon retracted its claws and set her free, allowing passage into the following text.

Instead of settling back into the chair, Christine began to pace the room with the book in hand. She was immediately engrossed in the account of a deadlier time and place. Europe's darker days seemed to come alive before her eyes in only the span of a paragraph. The further she went, the further the afflictions were described. Christine felt the pure ivory skin of her arm when the sensation of blackening flesh, the unerring sign of lethal internal hemorrhage, crawled across her nerves.

Horrendous living conditions, extreme death tolls, the destruction of society and unthinkable acts of persecution followed as she continued to devour the pages, wincing every so often in response.

Her pacing stopped when she came upon a particular little passage that caught her attention. The symptoms of the bubonic pandemic were there being described in vivid detail. Only one characteristic of the disease stood out: the swelling of the lymph nodes.

Christine paused to think. Raoul had mentioned something about the nodes in Liam's inner thighs being swollen. She had not been allowed to see it herself, but was certain that it matched the description shown in the book. It left her feeling shaken, the way one symptom—the very one her poor little waif was inflicted with—could practically define a tragic, fatal disease. She closed the book immediately and promised herself that Liam was not infected by a plague that had not reoccurred for centuries. Of course, she had no immediate idea that enlarged buboes could be a symptom of many different afflictions. What was there before her eyes was the only knowledge that she possessed.

The very idea was pure nonsense anyway; she knew she would only upset herself exploring it further. Still she wondered…

There was a knock at the door from the adjoining hall. Raoul's footsteps sounded rhythmically from the stairs. She hadn't the slightest idea why it had taken him so long to come back down and hoped he hadn't been brooding over something again—something like marriage.

Anxiously biting her lip, Christine shoved the plague book into the cushion of her plush reading chair, laced her hands together and went for the door. Before she could reach it, Romina darted past, insisting that it was her trouble to let in the guests. Eyebrows furrowing down at the little maid, Christine allowed her to greet the doctor and his assistant while she met Raoul on his way to the door.

"Is he on time?" she scoffed, brushing into him as he passed.

"Of course. He's much too particular to be anything else," replied the Vicomte wearily.

They continued on to meet their guests together, stride for nervous stride, afraid to look each other in the eyes.

Snowy boots scuffed against the hardwood floor as Romina took the men's coats. Face strained for calm, the doctor thanked the young servant quietly. Something was apparently troubling him.

Armand's thick leather mackintosh dropped to the ground in a heap the moment Christine came into view, just as Romina reached out to grab it. His tongue knotted up when the lady made her woefully stunning appearance. Her perfume intoxicated, her eyes captivated, the golden tendrils that fell about her face arrested...he was nothing more than a mass of spineless, rushing young hormones who happened to be able to stand upright in her presence. He took her in the way beggars admire the windows of pastry shops.

It took but one firm glance from D'Brouilliard to know why he shouldn't stare for long. Armand greeted the intimidating likes of the Vicomte first, as he had been instructed, before nearly swooning at the chance to kiss the lady's hand. After much hesitation, he did so quite awkwardly upon urging, not entirely certain whether he was overdoing it, under-doing it or whether he was taking too long, already nauseous with unease beyond reasonable composure.

When Christine addressed him, acting quite frailly to appease the gods of propriety, the lad wanted so desperately to say so much more than the few words his weak constitution would allow to escape him.

"Armand Pomeroy…and it is such a pleasure…to meet you," the pink faced ward stumbled over each syllable. He then sank back behind his master, ashamed of his own meekness. He wanted terribly to hear her speak again; to tell her how many times he had seen her perform and wished to meet her in person.

D'Brouilliard met Raoul with a welcoming embrace. This puzzled the boy and Christine equally, for they had not an inkling of the connection between the two.

"It's been quite a while, old man," sighed Raoul, a tight, infectious grin inching across his face.

D'Brouilliard did not smile. He did not blink. He did not even seem to breathe as the two of them pulled apart.

"It has. And perhaps it is for the best, Raoul. It was about time you got out from under my wing and learned to mend your own scraped knees."

The jest in his voice and his eyes finally shone through as his tone began to melt from the frigid cold, but something dismal about the aging surgeon still remained.

"Probably so. Needless to say, I don't believe I would have survived past fifteen without you," the Vicomte chuckled with great reserve.

D'Brouilliard removed the gloves from his hands one after the other, stretching and curling the joints of his arthritic fingers to relieve the stiffness. "That is exactly what your father used to tell me," he replied. "After all those summers I spent teaching you and Michel the way of things, it's some consolation to see at least _you've_ grasped sensibility."

He nodded dutifully, though no less stiffly, to Christine. She obliged a smile in return, not certain whether this man knew about the 'insensibility' of her origins and was mocking her or was truly oblivious.

Raoul raised a simpering eyebrow, "And the old devil hasn't? He would be the last I would imagine to be getting along poorly."

"Michel is well," D'Brouilliard huffed. "Well enough. He's found another avenue for his cause—one of the thousands of them. I'm afraid he's got it in his head that, well…it may not be my place to say, but…"

For a moment the old man pinched the bridge of his nose, bowed his head and seemed to be in deep, yet rapid thought. Thought that seemed to cause him pain.

"Oh, never mind," he then shook his head, dismissing himself angrily. "The less I speak my mind the better—_really,_ lad, he's as much of himself as he's always been. I haven't heard from him, though, in a little over a fortnight. He has been back from Moscow for weeks now, you know."

Raoul quietly took his fiancée's hand and smiled warmly through his words, "Yes, I know. Michel spoke with me before he left…he told me everything. From what I understand there aren't many who know the reason why he took leave for four months. Many nasty rumors floating about…"

D'Brouilliard's eyes grew even more distant than before, hands wringing the gloves clenched between his aching fists. Armand fidgeted behind his back.

"Most who do know what he's been up to would rather not speak of it," he uttered gruffly, consciously slurring the words. The doctor shifted his feet as if briefly losing balance, then went back to massaging the bridge of his nose. Everything about the man exuded unquestionable anxiety.

"Is something the matter, Geoffroi?"

D'Brouilliard's eyes shot up to face Raoul's immediately, "Nothing, my boy...just an ounce shaken from the morning. Damn Fridays..."

"Was there a mistfortune this morning"

"Yes. One death," Geoffroi pretended to choke out with all of the stern, righteous dignity he could muster. "An old woman...past ripened age...pneumonia..."

"But monsie-" Armand interrupted, sounding rather urgent.

"Quiet boy!" the doctor suddenly snapped angrily at his assisant. The young fool shrank back again, more out of fear than obedience this time around.

A singular bead of sweat streamed down from Geoffroi's forehead and the stress-induced lines about his face contorted into frightful ridges, but other than this, his expression showed flawlessly blank. The doctor was attempting to cheat his way through the natural human sensory of body language. He lied poorly, being much too much of a prude and of strict religious upbringing for this sort of deception.

He would hold his tongue, for there was no need yet to express the jarring distress that he had stumbled into earlier that morning to this innocent couple. He would not burden his dear young friend whom he had practically raised from boyhood with something of this potential magnitude that he was not certain of himself. What he had witnessed haunted him. It had manifested itself before his eyes much like a ghost. If he were to describe what he suspected of what he had seen that sinister morning in the terms of his deepest, darkest fears that in turn sprung up from the intense insecurity the anomaly had caused him, he surely would be labeled mad.

While he was contemplating this, Christine was already surging with impatience. She did not care to hear the specifics of their acquaintanceship anymore than she cared to hear a stranger on the street's life story.

"Isn't it about time someone attended the patient?" she snapped openly, stopping their conversation—rather, the leftover carcass which had once been light conversation—dead in its tracks and bringing gawking little Armand back into an awakened state.

Before Raoul could berate her disrespectful outburst in front of the men, D'Brouilliard agreed promptly—_loudly_—and asked to be shown up to the room. His request would not be delayed. He and his stocky assistant were ushered along.

When the most acclaimed doctor in all of the cluttered left bank of the Seine first laid eyes on his newest patient, his first impulse was to hold back a boisterous scoff of indignity. This he failed at doing so eloquently that Christine nearly turned to spit in his face. She kept quietly on the opposite side of her beloved, determined not to jeopardize the life of her friend only to oppose this man's cruel prejudice.

Raoul and Armand crowded on either side of the dissatisfied old doctor, waiting to hear his first impression of Liam's condition at a glance.

Eyes squinted but still alive with the same twinkle as always present, Liam sensed their presence in the room and turned over to face his visitors. Such an idiotic expression of elation spread across his bandaged face that it caused D'Brouilliard to sneer with almost piteous disdain.

Raoul only looked to the doctor in hope, wondering whether D'Brouilliard was his last chance of winning back his fiancée's peace of mind and therefore her good favor by helping this man. Christine still refused to meet him eye to eye, now finding something to affix her loving, coveted gaze on in the figure of the sickly man sprawled out on the chaise.

The doctor cleared his throat, testing his young friend's endurance with a brief and compulsory game of the eyes, "I trust you know that I am not a charity doctor…no matter what incredulous ideas _he_ has been putting into your head."

"I understand, Geoffroi, and I do not question the fact that your practice is of the utmost professional caliber. Christine insisted that we take in this man after she found him dying in the streets. There was no way to leave him with clear conscience… I will be taking full responsibility for the treatment of his afflictions now and I intend to see him completely cured before I allow him out of my home, if that is possible. I do not ask for your sympathy, only for you to do whatever it takes," explained Raoul in the sternest of terms.

It was most obvious to Christine that he was attempting to acquire her better side. She thought perhaps that what happened between them the night before had secured his newfound willingness to do for her whatever she wanted. The manipulation, apparently, worked in many different directions. Since the deception was now keeping Liam alive instead of only covering her insecurity, she was thoroughly convinced that there was nothing wrong in such methods of gaining the upper hand.

Liam regarded them softly but kindly. This softened the doctor a bit, who set his bitterness aside to genuinely care for this man, if only because Raoul genuinely cared for him and because it was his duty to do so.

"Let's have a look at you, then," nodded D'Brouilliard as he reached for the linens covering the heavily bruised man before him.

When the blanket was lifted, Christine found herself cringing. A fist-full of Raoul's waistcoat was suffocating in her grasp. He held her fast with one arm around her waist and the other firmly about her chest to prevent any rash action—or otherwise only to have her close—letting a reasonable distance between them and the doctor's work.

The Vicomte thought twice about allowing her to see the massive abscesses that had formed in the man's deep upper groin. Aside from the unclothed contents of the afflictions' immediate area, the sight of bulbs of raw, inflamed tissue festering with internal fluids was nothing a lady should concern herself with. The distress of seeing his condition would not alleviate any qualms stirring in her mind either. Christine and distress were well acquainted. They would swallow each other up if given good reason.

This was a good enough reason.

Yet when she strained to see around D'Brouilliard's back he found himself unresisting to her frantic need. There would be no keeping her away from this. It had been imbedded in Christine's bombarded mind that Liam was _hers_. Like a lioness to her mewling cub, something primitively instinctive—possibly maternal—was making him more and more vital to her stability with every mounting second; Raoul could feel it through her unseen tremors.

She protested to be let go, finally drawing the line and tearing away from his grasp to be at the doctor's side…at her beloved Liam's side. That first sudden stab of harsh refusal felt to Raoul like a stake driven into the chest. There was no relief from this sort of pain; nothing to do but push it away and focus on the issue at hand.

He could have very well realized within that instant that Christine had been right to tell him he was strong, but he was only that way beneath his devotion to her. The only way the resiliency could resurface was if that devotion was stripped away. Raoul clung to his dependence upon love for dear, dear life, the fear of losing her taking precedence over dignity and self-confidence. This was his choice: strength to face the trials before him with head held high or the constant, groveling need for her affection and favor. He found himself failing miserably at gaining either.

With Liam's exhausted consent, Geoffroi felt around the afflicted areas, assessing the range of severity.

The beaten little waif could not hold back the tremble in his inner thigh when the doctor's touch passed closer. His embarrassed blush was followed suit by a spike of pain that made him writhe so that Christine nearly jumped with fright. Still, she merely gasped and stepped closer to where he lay.

"How severe is the pain?" D'Brouilliard grunted.

"_Very_, good 'sieur," Liam fought himself to speak. He did so softly so that only the doctor could hear his hesitant answer.

"Localized lymphadenopathy...badly swollen groinal buboes," the doctor droned

without discernible expression. D'Brouilliard then turned to Liam, still devoid of emotion, "How long have they been present?"

The man found himself daunted by the old surgeon's cologne. It was thick all around him, a cloud of precious incense. In this flushing state of numbness, Liam could not speak nor breathe nor recognize the words coming out of Geoffroi's mouth. Christine dabbed the sweat from his neck and forehead with the end of the shawl she kept around her then nudged him kindly on the shoulder.

"Perhaps three days 'sieur," Liam finally returned to consciousness at her touch. His tender upturned smile kept Christine from pulling away. She remained there to kneel by his side and whisper soft reassurances while D'Brouilliard's examination pressed on.

Raoul attempted to cool the blood boiling through him. He felt almost compelled to leave the room, as if he had no right to come between this fragile woman and her smutty urchin. It was almost as if they were strangers before him. Only, he couldn't. He would turn to face one of the outer walls, cringing through the sting of fresh, raw, bleeding rejection and castigating himself severely for this sin against his own pride.

It was all for her, but Christine would never fully understand the depth his sacrifice. Not for a _very_ long time to come.

In the exposed light all four of them could see Liam's shaking grow from a mild tremble to a shudder, his broken body only trying to keep itself from shutting down under the immense pain and the direct touch of the cooler air in the room.

Within moments, the movement became severe. Violent creaking sounded from the stained chaise, triggering D'Brouilliard's hand to shoot out from beneath the leather bound notebook he had been writing in so intently to urge his patient's uncovered form back into a resting position.

When the good doctor felt the moistened skin, soft and giving beneath his own, his concern mounted.

"Don't move," Geoffroi ordered, "If what you're telling me is true, then you are in no condition to be stirring. Three days. This infection becomes severe within _hours_; they've had plenty of quality time to inflame themselves."

D'Brouilliard then addressed the worried pair hovering around him, continuing his monotone diagnosis, "Since it _is_ localized, thank Christ, it will not be as difficult to treat. Your waif will need strong analgesics—Armand will take care of this. In the meanwhile, the swollen areas should be properly addressed. Have your housekeeper prepare a few dampened cloths…preferably warm."

"I will get them, _docteur_," daintily insisted Christine, rising from where she knelt with pretty white hands clasped together. They were seeped with not only Liam's sweat, but her own as well. The urgency in her voice compelled the men not to say a word. But even still before anyone could oppose she had taken for the hall, bound for the kitchen and to handle to job herself.

Geoffroi then took the Vicomte aside and spoke softly, "The cause is unimportant for the time being, but if the swelling is the product of something venereal or cancerous we may have a greater problem on our hands."

"What is to be done for the time being then?" questioned Raoul, only relieved that Christine was out of the room and away from the source of misery.

"Surgery. The buboes must be removed," replied his dear old friend. D'Brouilliard dipped his hands into a limpid solution he had poured into a small dish at his side before gesturing Armand who had been standing stiffly at attention on the other side of the chaise to go for the large case kept at all times in the back of the coupé.

The lad knew what he meant right away and skidded out of the room, hoping to catch a glimpse of the fair maiden on his way down.

Sterile tension seemed to radiate from everything around them. Not the kind which causes discomfort, but rather the sort of tension that heightens the senses and readies the body and mind for what is to come. All the same, Raoul could not grasp any form of certainty and therefore he lost himself to worry again.

He quivered slightly as the doctor began laying out various knives and other instruments in calm preparation.

"Surgery! Certainly you can't perform a procedure in—"

"Do you have a problem with the location or the procedure itself, Raoul? With all of his other conditions that must be taken into consideration, I would rather not move him, and in all honesty, that chaise of yours has been through hell already. What's a bit more excretion going to make a difference?"

"It isn't that Geoffroi, it's—Christine. Must the surgery go through this morning? Is there any way it could be postponed?"

The nobleman would have foolishly sold his soul to hear the solitary word 'yes' from D'Brouilliard's mouth that very instant. He had not anticipated something so serious so soon. Christine didn't need this…less importantly, neither did he.

Perfected through the years, the doctor's intense sigh through the nostrils gathered and expelled the same raw emotion as an infuriated stallion. And then he spoke plainly, "This man is in pain. Great pain. He has done an exceptional job of convincing the mademoiselle otherwise. If you do not consent to this, well, then you've called me here for nothing. The infection will grow, he will reach the absolute end of the threshold and then there is a good chance that something like, oh, say…_sepsis_ sets in."

Raoul's burdened gaze settled on his own. There was an incredible amount of despair there which melted a little more of the doctor's stone cold heart.

"If you want this man healed, this is the way it is going to be done. I'm sorry, Raoul, but there is no other path to take at this point. Christine is a strong soul. Why, with all that she has encountered," he stepped over those last few words carefully, "I am certain she will be fine."

"Then as I've said," sighed the Vicomte, "Do what you must...**only** what you must."

* * *

When Christine returned to the doorway of the room a while later with a supply of towels, soaps and a fresh steaming pan of water she was met with the scent of chloroform wafting thickly through the air.

Armand had opened the door to find her standing there, confused as to what was going on inside. Shakily, he took the supplies from her hands and told her with the greatest of reluctance that the doctor would allow no one to enter for a while. One could only imagine the look of horror on the enamored young man's face when she began to shout with outrage, having wanted only one thing at the time and that being to please her.

Luckily, the Vicomte had anticipated such an outburst and was determined not to let her disturb the doctor.

Upon his emerging from the room—Armand quickly shutting the door behind him—Raoul took her gently by the shoulders and held her back against the wall with unshakable strength into the same position she had forced him the night before.

"It isn't a serious procedure. He's only removing the swollen nodes," he assured, leaning into her affectionately, hoping like mad that it would take only a gentle touch to calm her.

The struggle against his grip quickly began to gain fervor, "I've got to be with him. I thought you understood—I _**must**_ be with him."

"Stop that thrashing!" the Vicomte pled, mentally abusing himself for sounding so weak when she obviously needed his guidance and protection…his strength which was rapidly falling away.

"I won't let them! I won't let them cut into him that way without my being there!"

"You're overreacting and are obviously not well. You will rest until the operation is over…come now," he attempted to guide her, now in the broad daylight, along the hall to the nearby guest-room.

She only flailed more furiously than before, "Let go of me! You lied! You told me there would be only an examination!"

"I can explain this to you if you would calm down and think rationally for a moment. It's only light surgery. It isn't even…"

"I don't care!" she spat, forcing down the sobs in her throat to the point that it felt as if it were tearing open, "I don't want that pompous old wretch laying a hand on him! Did you see the way he was looking down his nose at my Liam? He'll be treated with the same care of a worthless animal!"

Raoul felt a most livid surge of rage when the woman in his arms referred to the beaten man as 'her Liam'. Two insignificant words. Never before had he felt so close to hating her. Only from a love most dangerously profound could arise such anger.

He wanted so ardently for Christine to see that this was all for her, and it was driving him to the edge of sanity.

"If you cared about that poor, miserable creature in the least you would let them do their jobs instead of making the situation worse than it should be!" he bellowed, the fury of his voice threatening to shake the city to its foundation. "And what in God's name am I raving for?! I could tell you these things until the life falls out of me and it will _still_ be of no use! You ask for understanding. Why can't you understand _me_?"

She stopped completely. For a moment he thought the sheer force of his words to have frightened her into calming down, and for once was not ashamed of scaring her as he had once been.

But when she shoved him in the chest with every last ounce of her strength, Raoul knew that there was nothing left to be done about Christine but to let her go. The damage was far past done.

He could only stand breathless in the place she had deserted him to watch her run blindly down the stairwell, hands holding her lovely, pristine face so overwrought with incomprehensible grief, in retreat from him and from all that stood in the way of her happiness, which were now, regretfully, the very same thing.

* * *

Christine tore the Black Death book from where it had sunk beneath the parlor chair's cushion and clutched it tightly to her chest. She would read it for eerie solace later on.

Salt from the tears streaming down her face burned like acid every time she tried to wipe them away. She wanted to bury her own head into the dark space between the cushions and would have promptly if it weren't for the risk of looking like a shamed child to anyone who cared to walk past the open parlor.

There wasn't anything in the world that she needed more than a comforting embrace, a warm body in which she could burrow her face and fragile sobs into without the complexity of mature romantic involvement. She did not want to see before her the hideous past and the confounding likes of the future that were constantly being thrown in her face. She wanted to let go of her despair out loud without anyone's disapproving glower or words.

She wanted, more than anything, to be a little girl again.


End file.
